


Heroic Histrionics

by Skeren



Series: Works of Reference for Sharing [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Avengers Academy, Alternate Universe - Different Parents, Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Eldritch Horror, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Family, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Serum, Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Alternate Universe - Twins, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Wings, Alternate Universe - Zodiac Curse, Alternate universe - Mafia, Children, Clones, Crack, Crossover Headcanons, Harry Potter Fusion, Headcanon, Hydra Tony Stark, Incubus Tony Stark, Other, Time Lord Tony, Timelines, Winter Soldier Tony Stark, Worldbuilding, genderflip, many alternate universes (to be added as they're added)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-20 10:28:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 41
Words: 70,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19374856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeren/pseuds/Skeren
Summary: The many and varied AUs and accompanying timelines of this particular author. Alongside many headcanons of varying intensity. Most of which revolves around Tony Stark.AKA, let's reshare everything compiled over a few years time in one handy dandy collection.





	1. An Almost Canon timeline

**Author's Note:**

> There will be so many timelines, and just as many AUs involved given I've spent years collecting this stuff and building it. It's going to cover all kinds of stuff, and I'll do my best to label each chapter with it's relevant AU/info. I'll also probably rearrange to try to keep all of the same AU together where I can.
> 
> This is _not_ a story in and of itself. This is just a collection of, in some cases incredibly detailed, notes from my blog on tumblr. In fact, I've toyed with the idea of expanding many of these AUs into a choose your own adventure which would take twists and turns that aren't even going to be noted here, should it ever actually be written. That does not, of course, mean that anyone is prohibited from enjoying or using these ideas, though please, a little credit if you do, ne? I'd love for this to have an inspired by section someday at the end.
> 
> I'm also happy to discuss any sections of this in the comments!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to state before I get started that there are some points on this timeline that I am fully aware of that deviate from MCU canon. One is when Tony’s parents die. I am aware I set it four years early. This is due to many things in how the first Iron Man movie was framed and Tony’s relationship with Obadiah. Making Tony younger thus made sense to me. Even after Civil War came out I felt no personal need to change this. 
> 
> The second major event is Bucky having any involvement with the Red Room in any fashion. So far as we know, that is NOT MCU canon, but it pertains heavily to how I write my variation of the muse so I’m sticking it here with everything else.

500s
    

Thor born.

1917
    

**March 10th:** James Buchanan Barnes is born.

**August 15th:** Howard Anthony Stark is Born.

1918
    

**July 4th:** Steven Grant Rogers is born.

1921
    

**April 9th:** Peggy (Margaret) Carter is born.

1936
    

Sarah Rogers dies of Tuberculosis. 

1942
    

**March:** Schmidt gets the Tesseract.

1943
    

**June:** Stark Expo with Howard’s fail flying car.

**June 14th:** Steve picked up for project rebirth.

**October:** Bucky picked up at the front as a POW.

**November 24th:** Steve to the rescue as Captain America.

1944
    

**Late December:** Bucky falls off the train and is recovered by Russians in league with HYDRA.

1945
    

**March 4th:** Steve crashes the Valkyrie into the ice, it’s reported the next day.

**March 4th:** Red Skull sent to space rather unwillingly, ends up stuck safeguarding the soul gem.

**March 23rd:** Winter Soldier project paperwork began on Bucky.

1946-1947
    

Hank Pym is born.

Events of Agent Carter.

1949
    

**April 27th:** Obadiah Stane is born.

James Barnes starts being frozen as the Winter Soldier.

1950-1952
    

SHIELD is founded by Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, and Chester Phillips. Exact date unclear.

1959
    

**February 8th:** Ivan Vanko is born.

1960
    

Janet Van Dyne is born.

1966
    

**June 17th:** Carol Danvers is born.

1968
    

**October 8th:** James Rupert Rhodes is Born.

1969
    

**December 18th:** (Robert) Bruce Banner is born.

1970
    

**May 29th:** Tony (Anthony Edward) Stark is Born.

1971
    

**January 7th:** Clint(on Francis) Barton is born.

Hank Pym cuts ties with SHIELD.

1974
    

Stark Expo

1978
    

**September 23rd:** Sam(uel Thomas) Wilson is born.

1980
    

Hope Van Dyne is born.

Peter Quill is born.

1984
    

**November 22:** Natasha Romanoff as Natalia Romanova born.

1985
    

Tony and Rhodey meet in college.

1987
    

**March:** Tony finishes design and Dum-E is born.

**June:** Tony Graduates from MIT.

**December 16th 7:01pm:** Tony’s parents are killed by the Winter Soldier. (canonly 1991)

Janet Van Dyne goes subatomic.

1988
    

Peter Quill’s mother dies and he’s taken off-planet by Yondu.

1989
    

Captain Carol Danvers takes a flight using an experimental engine and ends up enhanced with memory loss.

1991
    

**February:** Tony finally sorts out the code to get JARVIS online the first time.

**April 12th:** JARVIS becomes properly sentient and asks his first emotionally driven question.

**June:** Tony takes full control of Stark Industries.

**December:** When the other four Winter Soldiers created. (Also movie date of Stark deaths)

1992
    

**January:** Tony takes over Stark Industries.

Vibranium stolen from Wakanda by T’Chaka’s brother.

1994
    

**April:** The Winter Soldier lent temporarily to the red room to train children.

**June:** Tony overseas at a party, and vanishes for two weeks due to being abducted. He returns home immediately on being free again, seemingly none the worse for wear.

1995
    

**March:** The Winter Soldier Red Room experiment concluded and those who did not pass the grade are terminated. The rest are returned to classes, and the Winter Soldier is returned to storage after his mind is cleaned.

**April:** Carol Danvers recovers her memories and saves the Skrull.

1997
    

**April 3rd:** Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are born.

1999
    

**October:** Tony meets and hires Pepper Potts as his personal assistant.

2000
    

**New Years:** Killian makes his resolve to be an asshole to Tony someday.

2001
    

**August 10th:** Peter Parker is Born.

**September 11:** National catastrophe strikes. Tony did not arrive to an intended meeting in the area, and immediately throws more focus into weapons for National Defense.

2003
    

Bruce gets into the mess that leads to the Hulk being created.

2008
    

**Early May:** Obadiah takes out a hit on Tony the day after Pepper’s birthday, Afghanistan happens. Tony is in captivity for his birthday.

**June:** Bruce has the disaster that breaks Harlem.

**August 24th:** Tony shuts down weapons production on arriving home to US soil.

**September 3rd:** Tony promptly digs in and starts making suits, and more suits, and cruising the world taking out weapons.

2009
    

**Late May:** Obadiah dies after a mess of events that lead to him being blown up.

**July:** Vanko duplicates mini-Arc.

**August:** Tony realizes that he has a problem on his hands with the Palladium.

Natasha meets Winter Soldier on assignment and is shot by him.

2010
    

**Late February:** Opening of Stark Expo.

**Next day:** Senate hearing.

**February:** Vanko starts work on the whips.

**Early March:** Tony gives Pepper SI.

**Next week:** Natasha hits the scene as Natalie Rushman.

**April:** Disaster of a race with Vanko.

**May:** Tony’s disaster birthday party.

**November:** Doctor Stephen Strange has a car accident while being offered a fix for Hammer’s test pilot.

2011
    

**January:** Tony confined to his residence.

**April 25th:** Thor crashes down in New Mexico.

**April 26th:** Tony creates the new element and uses it on himself. Coulson leaves the same day

**April 26th:** Stark expo is _completely trashed_ by Hammeroids, Rhodey, and Tony. Thus these are the closing ceremonies.

**May 6th:** Thor and the Warrior’s Three trash New Mexico town.

**July:** Steve found and woken.

**September 20th:** Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed.

2012
    

**May 4th:** Loki arrives on the scene and screws up a SHIELD facility, taking people with him.

**Within a week after the 4th:** Causes a scene in Europe, then the next day fucks up New York all over the place.

**Early December:** The Mandarin starts killing people on National television, Tony throws down his challenge.

**Late December:** Tony has the shitfest with Killian which carries over the New Year and involves saving the president.

2013
    

**January:** Bruce pops up and Tony enlists him to help solve the Extremis situation with Pepper.

**February:** Tony decides to have surgery to get the shrapnel out. (Mine kept the reactor and seated it better in his chest. Most do not.)

**November 8th:** Jane Foster caught up with the Ether.

**November 10th:** Shit gets real in London with Dark elves.

2014
    

**April 4th:** Assassination attempt on Fury kicks off things going to hell in Washington DC. 

**April 6th:** Helicarriers come down.

**Early August:** Guardians of the Galaxy, fiasco where Quill meets the rest of his team.

**November:** Matt Murdock comes to New York and sets up his practice.

**December:** The events of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 wherein Peter Quill meets his asshole dad Ego and then the man dies. He was a planet. During this time where are also goo insurgencies all over the galaxy, including a town on Earth.

2015
    

**Early April:** Daredevil becomes a big deal.

**Late April:** Avengers recover Loki’s staff.

**May 4th:** Ultron born, JARVIS dies.

**May 5th:** Vision born, and Sokovia is destroyed. 

**July:** Scott Lang has his showdown and becomes Ant-man.

**Late August:** Stephen Strange camps out to get training from the monks as a last-ditch tactic.

**November:** Jessica comes face to face with Killgrave again.

2016
    

**March:** The second round of Matt Murdock’s Life Is A Mess.

**First week of August:** Peggy Carter dies, Sokovian Accords brought to Tony’s attention. Tony brings it to the attention of the other Avengers. Plots set in motion by Zemo for the Avengers.

**August 6th:** Peggy’s funeral. The bombing of the UN Meeting.

**August 8th morning:** Airport fight with all the Avengers on Earth.

**August 8th evening:** Tony finds out about how his parents died in Siberia, has a fight with Steve and Bucky. 

**August 9th-14th:** Negotiations for plea bargains with caught Avengers and Steve breaking out the remainder.

**August 14th:** T’Challa’s coronation.

**August 15th-20th:** Events dealing with Klaue and Killmonger.

**September:** Luke Cage makes the news in Harlem.

**Early October:** Events of Spider-man Homecoming. 

2017
    

**January:** Doctor Strange finishes his training and comes to be the primary Sorcerer in defense of the planet’s weak points.

**March:** Danny Rand comes back to the United States and takes up his inheritance.

**August:** The Defenders become a Thing. Temporarily.

**September:** Inhumans dropped to Hawaii during Moon crisis.

**November:** Thor reunites with Loki, meets Hela. Bruce also joins the party. Grandmaster is overthrown and Asgard is destroyed.

**November:** Frank Castle returns to New York.

2018
    

**August 15th-18th:** Events of Ant-man and the Wasp. 

**Late August:** Thanos does his thing and is an _epic dick about it._ Half the population is snapped away.

**Mid-September:** After 22 days in space, Nebula and Tony are dropped on on Earth by Captain Marvel. Nebula leads them to Thanos who snapped the gems away.

2019
    

**November 16th:** Morgan Stark is born.

2023
    

**May:** Events of Endgame which lead to most of the population being brought back as though no time passed for them. Tony is lost.


	2. Dum-E

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Smoothie Thing.

The first time Dum-E made a smoothie for Tony it was in the weeks following his parents dying, just after he’d decided he had enough of college for the moment and really didn’t want to be anywhere that was going to make him think about the fact his parents were gone. 

Sure, his dad was a douche, but he wasn’t the one he was really grieving, and he was just a little bitter that his mom was just a footnote applied to his dad’s news stories. She wasn’t perfect, but she’d been around. He just refused to think about it. Done was done and he was just going to have to live with it.

But, because of that, he’d been doing his level best to thoroughly distract himself, to make sure he had his hands busy at all times and his attention fixed somewhere that wouldn’t make him want to break anything.

That didn’t lend itself to good eating habits.

Honestly, he couldn’t say when, exactly, Dum-E had made it his priority to try to help. Maybe it was the breaking up of an established pattern since he’d been made that did it, or maybe it was that Tony had been running more or less on smoothies for over two weeks and he’d observed the process enough times to figure it out.

He was a learning AI after all.

But, the first time it happened, it was a surprise. Tony had just wanted him to stop poking at him and had told him to make himself useful.

In return, he’d gotten a smoothie that had way too much vegetable to be strictly awesome but was perfectly edible. 

It had been enough to get him actually thinking again, at least enough to focus on something bigger. It was enough to give him ideas, ones that would take a while, but he didn’t regret a thing about that. 

He was proud his first AI had learned what he could only see as _concern_ and that was more than enough for him.


	3. Odds and Ends Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Details for my default canon frame.

Tony’s mother was Italian, and Howard was of Jewish descent. Tony learned about that faith from the Jarvises because god alone knew Howard wasn’t going to do it, but he never once considered practicing. He knew it would be disrespectful to half-ass it, and uncomfortable besides. So, after his teenage years, it never came up again.

He tried to learn some of the Italian recipes his mom had from her mother. He never touched that again either, but he can speak Italian with perfect ease.

* * *

Tony is a guy who expresses his affection in three ways. He’ll give presents, he’ll try to help you with things, and he’ll touch you. Sometimes all at once.

Unfortunately, his helping usually involves giving things that can help, and he’s offended more than one person who didn’t get it and thought he was being condescending, or on one memorable occasion, insulting their choice of gear.

It’s things like this that led to Tony just throwing an open line of money at Pepper to buy herself presents because he doesn’t want to get the _wrong_ gift over and over.

* * *

By this same token, Tony sees his money as just another thing, unimportant in and of itself. If he can buy things for someone, it makes him feel useful. If he can pay bills, he feels like he’s taking care of people around him. If he buys things they want, it’s presents.

* * *

Tony has never had anyone try to hurt him during a hug, and trusts hugs infinitely more than handshakes.

* * *

Tony wouldn’t take things from other people starting in his late teens. He got given a drink at a party once and only Rhodey’s intervention saved him from being taken god knows where while unconscious. Other experiences since then have only reinforced his aversion to taking anything from anyone.

This especially applies to food.

* * *

If Tony makes something for someone, it’s like he’s trying to give them a piece of himself. Rejecting it is seen as a form of personal rejection.

* * *

Tony has consent issues. He will always have consent issues because, in a lot of ways, he is who he is because he never had a choice about his fame. He never had a choice about the direction his life would go.

He’ll never make important choices for anyone if he can avoid it, because in his opinion, it’s horrible, and he wants people to always be able to choose what goes on in their life.

In a very strange twist on this, he’ll always prefer to have his own right to choose stolen from him than to have it happen to someone he cares about, and he’ll consider this totally acceptable.

* * *

Tony is still proud of his weapons, and it frightens him that he wants recognition for how well they can destroy things. On some level he still wants them to be used, and it drives him even harder to avoid ever letting them out.

He was simultaneously elated and sickened by what his repulsor tech could have done had the events of WS not been stopped.

He feels much the same about Ultron.

* * *

FRIDAY sounds, entirely by accident, remarkably like Steve’s mother. No one has bothered to inform him of this, and he’d be very surprised to hear it.

He would never change her just to make someone else more comfortable if he found out though.

* * *

Tony always liked Bucky better. Steve was the one his dad adored, and who he compared him to (usually unfavorably) and he didn’t much care for it. He’d never be a big blond blue-eyed fighter for patriotism.

He could be a charming dark-haired supporting role that would follow his friends to the ends of the earth.

* * *

When something has Tony’s absolute, undivided attention, he will be still.

* * *

Flirting and sex are, and always would be, because Tony craves hugs and touches. He got amazing at sex because it was the only way he’d get anyone to touch him for years.

He doesn’t regret it, but sex has never been the important part of sex.

Then again, he also does really like sex, but that’s kind of a happy bonus.

* * *

Tony doesn’t consider kissing to be attached to relationships even when he’s in one. To him, they’re just another form of casual affection.

* * *

Tony’s PAs, as well as Pepper’s, all have had clauses to give them permanent life insurance once they’ve been hired on to either of them. This continues after they’re released due to the high risk of someone going after them in hopes they might know anything just because of proximity.

* * *

Tony never stopped giving to charity projects, and personally oversees one of Malibu’s city-wide science fairs every year even now that he’s moved to New York. 

Winner of the contest gets to attend a science convention, all expenses paid, as Tony’s official guest, even if he doesn’t end up going himself.

* * *

Tony was 17 when his parents died. It’s a difference from MCU canon, but he still didn’t take up the company until he was 21. This gave Obadiah almost four undisputed years in control before Tony stepped up.

* * *

Tony’s two favorite alcoholic beverages are Scotch and Champagne. If he’s feeling exotic, it’s Sake. He only goes for something else if these three are not options.

* * *

Tony created Dummy as his doctorate project. He was 17.

He created JARVIS before he was willing to touch the company. He was 21.

* * *

Tony never picks the accents his AIs use. He just gives them their personality, then lets them pick what they like best. He genuinely wasn’t sure that FRIDAY actually would want to use a feminine voice.

He expected JARVIS to come out Brooklyn because of how he tended to talk while he was still confined to text.

* * *

**Regrets?**

He regrets everything Stane did in his name, he regrets everything his weapons were used for that he didn’t know, or care about even on official channels. He regrets that Sokovia was treated like it was. 

He regrets Yinsen.

He regrets Killian and what his negligence did to him and Maya. 

He regrets that he was too slow in New York to stop the portal being opened.

He regrets that he failed with Ultron and got JARVIS destroyed. He regrets that he wasn’t there to help Steve in D.C. 

He regrets every time he failed to find out what his father did before he took over the company, like what happened with Vanko’s family. 

He regrets not paying enough attention to SHIELD to realize the HYDRA situation.

He regrets things he has no right in regretting because he thinks he should be all-knowing and fix everything that he has the ability to touch on any level. 

He regrets that he’s not enough to actually be as perfect as he thinks he should be.

* * *

**Cactus Fruit Sorbet: This shouldn't work but does**

Tony being an affectionate toucher. You don’t see much of it in the movies, because he’s very cautious to only touch people he likes or trusts, but if you pay attention, the more comfortable he is with people, the more casual contact he has with them. It’s kind of a fascinating progression that on the surface can seem like an on/off situation where he’s either touching everyone or touching no one and that just isn’t how he works.

**Elderberry: Hurt/comfort**

I imagine that Tony has this habit of holding his breath when he gets set off on something that might trigger a panic attack, and Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey have learned to watch for it. Usually, this immediately prompts a hug, chatter, or something of that nature to try and distract him, depending which of them it is. I imagine Rhodey is the loudest of the three, but also the one most likely to physically manhandle him to distract him. Happy would probably set off into a current favorite part of one of his shows, and Pepper throws business stuff at his head, which he finds especially bewildering after he gave it all to her, and thus is doubly effective.

On this note, I imagine that because of the physical distance and space that only Bruce has also learned this tell among the Avengers, and he has acquired the habit of fleeing the scene rather than risk them realizing he even has panic attacks.

**Jasmine Peach Tea: Self-care/Self-love**

Tony buys cufflinks. He has this oddball collection of them from ones that look super gaudy to plain studded metal ones, and he likes to put little bits of tech inside them or along the backs of the bigger flat ones. He rarely wears the same ones twice in a row unless he’s not feeling well and is leaning on a pair as a small fiddle crutch. Usually, when he does that it’s the perfectly smooth ones in his collection he uses because the texture of them doesn’t rub his fingers raw if he passes his fingers over them repeatedly in a day.

* * *

**Social Groups!**

Tony is the frontman officially for any and all events related to the Maria Stark Organization, and it’s one of the few things he’s never deflected to Pepper to handle for him. This means that he’s known in charity circles, to say nothing of other big celebrity circles, the military people he _still_ keeps in contact, and what he maintains in the business world even without being CEO.

**What role does he like to play?**

Tony likes to be the invisible benefactor. It may not seem like it, but he likes to step back and work from behind the scenes, and he’s set up several smaller charity organizations for different causes along these lines. People don’t connect them with him, and he prefers it that way, though he’ll publically enough donate to them to draw attention to what he’s trying to support.

On a personal level, he just likes to be _helpful._

**What role does he actually play?**

Man in charge, man at the center of everything, guy who the world sees and passes opinions on. He plays shield and deflection screen at once and takes heat for things that aren’t strictly his to take heat _for._

It’s just what it _is._

* * *

**Weaknesses!**

Tony _trusts._ It’s painful to watch, honestly. He lets himself fall so deep into trust with people he can’t see that they might not always be on his side, and is surprised every damn time when they aren’t anymore.

He’s a perfectionist. It’s always inwardly directed too, so it’s always him thinking he can do better, do more, do it in some way that makes everyone else’s life easier. It makes him seem like he has this ego and arrogance, but it’s not coming from that place of confidence. It’s coming from that place of self-dissatisfaction that he’s somehow not doing his best yet so he has to keep _trying._

He has more, but those are the most crippling two.

* * *

**Discipline at home as a child?**

This was a very confusing situation for Tony. No one was strict, exactly, but there were very firm rules. If you didn’t follow those rules, it varied from person to person. Howard, for instance, would either yell or pretend he wasn’t even _there._ Maria would scold him and push him off on someone else to deal with. Edwin and Ana actually did things like give him a task to make up for his misdeed and scold him. They were the only two who ever let him know they weren’t mad anymore once his penance was up though.

**Did they travel?**

Can, did, and does. As a kid, it was going with his parents to things and to school. As an adult later it was business and parties. Now it’s business and heroing. Tony’s never really traveled the world just to _do_ it. He’s always had some kind of thing he needed to be doing when he arrived somewhere.

Man needs a proper vacation.

* * *

**Religion**

Tony is neither for nor against religion. He sees its value, why people do it, and understands the fundamental principles of more than one. He’ll never personally follow any of them, however, because he knows he could never believe in them the way that such things are designed to be believed in. If he could, he would have ended up Jewish, but because of a hard stare into the philosophies of that religion as a kid, he determined that he’d just keep out instead of half-assing it.

**Did he like school, teachers, classmates?**

Not really. Unfortunately, painfully true up until college. He always felt like he was outpacing the kids around him, even when they were older, and he tended to get a lot of resentment for that. Teachers got exasperated with his restlessness, and school just didn’t feel like a _challenge._

Once he hit college it got better, he could talk to people and feel more like he was having a proper conversation instead of being trapped with people who couldn’t keep up. He could work at his own pace, and that all by itself vastly improved the experience.

**Does he feel self-righteous, revengeful, or contemptuous?**

Well, this one is tricky, because the answer is both yes and no. Tony doesn’t feel like he has the high ground when it comes to right and wrong, and never will, but that doesn’t mean he won’t point out and hold to really rigid standards for himself and others if he thinks they’re fucking up.

Similarly, while he wouldn’t take out revenge on his own behalf, it certainly whips out for everyone ELSE and heaven help anyone who dares trespass on people who he’s claimed under his protection.

And contempt… all intellectual. And even that, it’s more a matter of seeing that someone can do better and then observing that they _aren’t_ which royally tics him off because he is aware, and can see, and thus will lose all respect for that person. Hammer, hilariously, is in this category.

* * *

**Tony and Thunder**

Tony has never had any close associations with thunder, at least, not until after Afghanistan. Before that, it was just a sound that went with rain, loud and interesting but never scary. After Afghanistan, it started to serve as a warning bell to get inside, to not go _outside_ because fuck the rain. Fuck water from the sky.

After he met Thor, it was still a warning bell but also kind of… nice. comforting if he wasn’t out in it, because it meant his teammate was around to have his back. So he still looks around when he hears it, but it’s not all caution all the time anymore. Sometimes he’s just hopeful.

**Tony and New People**

Oh man. Tony is of two minds about new people. There is, on the one hand, new-to-his-awareness, then there is they-are-new-to-him and these, I should mention, are _completely different animals_. 

If you have caught his attention previous but have not met him in person, he probably has put in the time, energy, and curiosity to research you. Which means he’ll be coming at you from the high ground of more info, which will make him seem a hell of a lot more friendly.

If you are new to him and he’s never heard of you though. Oh my. You’ll either get the ‘I am blatantly ignoring you as in any way equal to me’ situation or the ‘I am going to treat you fabulously but I’m actually wary as hell’ borderline hostile+friendly thing. The upside is that this will rapidly fall in either direction once he makes up his mind on where you sit.

* * *

**About Tony's Piano**

Tony Stark is shown in his first movie with a black piano, very nice, very classy, that he accidentally destroys while falling through his house in a bit of a disastrous landing.

In Civil War, Tony’s opening memory scene has his mom playing the piano. This piano is the same exact kind as the one that was in the Malibu house.

I’m pretty sure that Tony accidentally killed his mom’s piano.

* * *

**HUD Colors**

Tony’s HUD is, from everything we’ve seen, preferentially blue, with red and gold as alternate colors, as well as sometimes white. My Tony at least favors blue as one of his private colors, and red and gold are colors he associates with himself.

Rhodey’s is green. At least, after Tony’s done with messing with it after the Hammer fiasco it’s green. Does that mean Rhodey’s favorite color might be green?

* * *

Natasha knew just as much about Bucky having killed Tony’s parents as Steve did. She was there too, after all. 

The big difference is that she never preached anything about honesty and insisting on sharing information. She didn’t make herself a hypocrite. It also wasn’t anything new for Tony to not be informed of something, and she might actually have assumed it was Steve’s job to let Tony in on it since it was Steve’s friend responsible. 

Not that Tony knows any of this, but it’s definitely something to think about.

Just, you know, putting that out there. 

Because reasons.

* * *

**Tony has issues adjusting to seeing Vision because he makes him sad.**

Let me just explain the reason for this. It’s sort of like that guy who loses say, a family member, and they have a kid who looks just like them but has a totally different set of preferences and skills.

The person who lost the family member wouldn’t want to blame the kid, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt to look at them. It’s kind of like that here. 

It’s even worse after recent events for Tony too because the absolute trust he had in JARVIS will never have the chance to blossom for Vision. 

Not ever.

Not even if he desperately wants to recapture that sense of family and support. That is what he has FRIDAY for, and that’s just not the same as someone who was there for more than half his life.

I mean, he never did replace it.

* * *

I noticed that Tony abuses the word though. He uses it ALL THE TIME. It’s like, practically a verbal tic.

* * *

He never raises just one eyebrow. It’s almost exclusively both eyebrows.

* * *

Any time someone gives him pancakes he eats them dry with his fingers. If they come with fruit, he picks them off with his fingers to eat first then eats it _more carefully_ with his fingers.

* * *

He licks his lips when he’s about to say something he’s not sure he wants to say.

* * *

He’d rather start laughing hysterically than cry. And will do so.

* * *

Tony prefers to initiate all touch unless he’s decided he trusts someone. Sometimes this trust comes frighteningly fast. Instantly even. Other times it’ll be months or years before he relaxes at unannounced contact.

* * *

He never meets with strangers on a business level without first watching them for at least a few minutes via his AI.

* * *

Gorgeous and Sweetheart are his go to ‘I like you’ pet names, Honey is his exasperated one, and derivatives like Sweetcheeks and Sweetie tend to be used somewhat condescendingly. Sweetie also tends to be a go-to for children and is never meant badly in such instances.

* * *

Tony adores children and is continually convinced he’d fuck one up. He’s a viciously protective parent though and would guard any children he had to the ends of the earth like an avenging dragon. He’s an equally protective uncle figure. As has been proven.

* * *

Tony is a touchy-feely man. If he doesn’t feel like he can make casual physical contact, he’s going to feel emotionally removed from a person as a whole, because he’ll take the bubble as a subconscious dismissal.

* * *

If Tony is distressed, he expects people around him to be rude and power through it. If they try to be delicate, he feels like he’s being mocked or dismissed, depending on if they stay or go.

* * *

Tony talks with his hands. Literally. Sometimes if he has nothing in his hands he’ll set off into ASL land while talking, matching gestures to words. This hasn't always had exactly wonderful results.

The above point is a large part of why he always has some kind of phone or tablet at hand or pins his hands in his pockets when he can’t use that distraction either. He’s aware of his hand talking and doesn’t really want that to get around.

* * *

He’s a snacker. If you stick food or drinks around Tony, he’ll absently pick them up and eat/drink them so long as he’s in a space he’s deemed safe. Usually, this is only at home, but not always.

* * *

Tony likes to share. He will offer people stuff any time he gets something edible pretty much always.

* * *

Tony also likes to give gifts. The more useful, the more he likes you/wants to impress you. If it’s something catered to your tastes and needs it’s a sign of incredibly deep regard. If it’s not. Well. He either can’t figure out what you need, or just plain doesn’t know what to do with you. He never gives gifts if he doesn’t at least like someone.

* * *

He will hug. He does that. He’s really good at being able to tell when people Do Not Hug however and will act accordingly. Sadly, this means he doesn’t get to hug often at all.

* * *

He won’t take things you hand him. He will not shake your hand. These are signs of extreme trust.

* * *

He feels no need to let people finish talking if he thinks they’re being stupid. However, if he truly respects someone he will wait them out and listen.

* * *

He smiles. If he’s angry, he smiles. If he’s hurt, he laughs. If he feels sad, he’ll grin. Tony’s smiles are happy from time to time, but it’s unfortunately not anywhere near as often as it seems. His media smile is flawless, and only people who know him well can usually tell the differences.


	4. Tony Serious Takes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long bits and pieces that go in depth about Tony's interactions and what they mean in the world.

** Tics and Overlooked Details **

Tony Stark is, by and large, a character known for his verbosity, his way with people, and his facades. So, this section will go into those things and touch on exactly what he thinks of himself when he throws around phrases like ‘genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist’ at people. There will also be a detour into his sexuality and why I pin it in the direction I do.

* * *

First, his four-word byline, his go to in the face of insult, and his guiding light when reaching for a shield of his own. ‘genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist’. This isn’t a self-praise. This is Tony holding up a line that’s been aimed at him over and over for years and going ‘don’t you know? This is who I am’. 

Genius, because Tony is a genius. His brilliance is undisputed and has long been touted as his _best_ feature, and never let him fool you that he’s not aware of that. He’s long been taught, unintentionally through family and the media, more intentionally through Obadiah and those like him, that if he wasn’t smart, he’d be less valuable. This is, in some ways, even later perpetuated by the Avengers on accepting gear without, in some cases, seeming to even properly get to know him. 

Billionaire is self-explanatory. Everyone knows Tony has money. Because they know he has money they expect him to use it, and to be out of touch. He contributes funds to everything in the team, and without his money, he wouldn’t have had nearly as many resources to make his suits from. He can live in comfort and he knows it, but he also knows many people only see the money and where it came from before anything else.

Playboy. This one is both a point of pride and a point to sigh over by Tony I think. On the one hand, he put a lot of effort into being approachable, and in making sure that his partners never feel cheated by the experience when he leaves him. 

And then we have Philanthropist. I always found it interesting it’s the last thing on the list. It’s the thing he adds for himself, that he _is_ but that he doesn’t tend to talk about. It’s the thing people rarely are willing to admit to like the other three, and the one that he’s most proud of. So on the one hand, he wants it to be the one that lingers in the mind, but he also knows it won’t be.

* * *

So, above I mention Tony’s tendency to please his partners. There is more to the playboy thing. I think there is genuine proof that while Tony is _incredibly_ reactive, he’s not actually in it for the sex. Thus, asexual. With Christine, for example, he puts his proposition forward in a relatively tactful way but uses it as a deflection. Similarly, with Maya, he seems genuinely more interested in the science until she makes an overture, at which point he’s willingly distracted.

Meanwhile, with Pepper, he never moved in for the kiss. No, this is important. It’s not because he didn’t like the idea of kissing her, but he was letting _her_ determine when and if it will happen. The only reason he moved in for the rooftop kiss was exhilaration, but the immediate ‘is this okay?!’ is actually quite important. Everything we see shows even if he expresses any kind of interest, he only follows through on turning it from friendly to sexual if the other person first shows that they want to treat it that way. 

It’s all very passive, and not something someone whose interest is sexual would probably default to when dealing with interested parties. Especially when it wouldn’t be difficult at all to be more forward and get a favorable reaction. Of course, none of this is concrete proof of his inclinations, but it makes sense given, in my head at least, that he’s a man who is easily distracted from sex with thoughts of science and can easily live without sex as much as with it without giving it a thought.

I also have him flagged down as a polyromantic person. That isn’t as obvious as it looks. While yes, my Tony is happy with Poly relationships, in this instance it’s more that gender has no real impact at all to his romantic inclinations. The actual definition of the flag for it is as such: Polyromantic is a term which is typically used by open-minded people who was to disregard the idea that there are only two sexes or genders (male & female). 

I feel this very much fits Tony.

* * *

Now, for something a little lighter but no less important. Tony talking.

No, bear with me. Tony talking is important. As seen in Civil War, he talks. A lot. Natasha noticed something was wrong in his silence and Steve just… failed to get it, instead making a smart remark about how Tony had his mind made up. While true, that wasn’t the reason he was quiet.

Tony has a long history of silence when something is wrong. He wasn’t silent because of the Accords. He was silent because he’d had the death of a young philanthropist shoved in his face. Tony presents it as a reason, rather than something that pains him, and the others just don’t _get_ it.

Tony’s silences cover for him when he doesn’t trust himself to talk, when he might risk giving away a soft spot or saying something too personal. They mean something is _wrong_ more often than not, and this applies to all situations. If something is off in the bedroom, it’s very unlikely he’ll _say_ anything, and he’ll instead just ease back into more passive behaviors. If he’s _dying_ then he won’t say a word and wait for people to notice. If he’s hurt, he’ll watch, and wait, and work around it.

His silences cover distress. That’s not to say that’s his only reaction to things being wrong, just his most common, and it’s something to keep in mind. After all, he did ask Pepper, then Natasha, for alternate choices about his birthday in IM2. That was an alternate version of silence, where he skips around the topic and hopes to get out of something he doesn’t really _want_ to do. He ends up doing it anyway because he can’t make himself clear.

Part of that is because his facade is such that silence just seems like he’s holding himself aloof, but part of it is that I rather think he simply doesn’t know how to convey things that he finds so very important when he’s not sure other people would find them equally so.

It’s easy to talk someone into fighting hunger when hunger is a tangible, visible thing. It’s harder to talk someone around to letting you have a quiet birthday.

* * *

**** ****

** Comparative Technology **

Okay you lot, I have something to tell all of you out there that seem to be under the impression that because Shuri’s tech is _amazing_ and advanced more quickly than Tony’s that that makes her more intelligent than he is. Now, I’m not saying she’s not _brilliant,_ because I’m sure she’s one of the most intelligent characters in the series, and might even surpass Tony, but _that is the wrong thing to base it off of._

You see, Shuri is from Wakanda. Shuri had a _privileged upbringing_ in that she was from the most advanced country in the world. She didn’t start at black and yellow monitors and floppy disks. No, she started in at least a modern footing of technology, if not further, and built on that. She already had the code to build on. She had the _foundation_ to build on.

Tony did not. Tony had his dad’s work, which had some intuitive leaps, but most of those Howard locked away and never shared with the world, let alone with his son. No, largely, in this comparison, Tony pioneered in a country that was well behind the curve by Wakanda standards. In fact, let me frame this differently. 

Tony’s achievements put against Shuri’s is like putting a kid going to school in a high-end New York special school with all the bells and whistles and new computers and a _huge_ budget against that kid who has to order everything online in high stakes eBay auctions because their school has two computers for the entire student population and their budget is approximately three dollars a student for the entirety of a student’s school career. In this particular comparison, Tony is a kid bringing enough money from home to actually manage those auctions so he can build his school projects, but he’s still being taught at a _much_ lower standard while having to make up the difference entirely out of his own resourcefulness. The kid at the high-end fancy New York school, on the other hand, has everything they need at their fingertips, and the struggle simply isn’t _there._

And I think that’s where people are losing the plot. Shuri is a brilliant, innovative girl, who has done _amazing_ things with the specialization that her country’s access to Vibranium has allowed her. That doesn’t put her above or below the guy who had to claw his way up from boxy computers that only did anything if you input them with a floppy bit of plastic that barely had any information on it to being the creator of multiple AI consciousnesses (one of which he developed in the late 80s when the internet was still a bit of a joke no less), up to what he’s done _now._

So guys, please. Be happy about Shuri, she’s amazing, but don’t point at Tony and laugh while you do, because that’s not a fair comparison to _either_ character. Shuri couldn’t do what she does without someone in Wakanda being what Tony is for his country before her. 

Remember that.

* * *

**Tony and Happy's Relationship**

Happy and Tony have known each other a long time, actually longer than he’s known Pepper. He ended up getting a bodyguard when he was 24 after he got picked up at a party and didn’t have anyone with him to notice that he hadn’t actually wanted to go with the person on his own. It was a mess, and it made him paranoid enough that he felt like he needed another set of eyes on him because he couldn’t rely on his own.

Because of this, when he met Happy he was really open to the idea of actually trying to trust someone to watch out for him that was new. Hilariously, Happy wasn’t actually trying to get a job with Tony when they met. In fact, he was working on getting an instructor gig at a local gym, and Tony sort of slipped in and was all ‘so tell me how good you really are at this stuff’ and that turned into an impromptu interview that Happy hadn’t been remotely prepared for.

Tony liked what he saw and talked the man into being his bodyguard, his sometimes driver if he’d been drinking, and his general eyes to make sure nothing fucked up happened that he didn’t want to have happen. They spent a lot of time together after that and realized that they actually liked each other’s sense of humor, and Tony’s tendency to get himself into weird situations was enough to keep Happy on his toes without being overwhelmed.

It really screwed with Happy’s head to go from constantly needed guardian angel, close friend, and confidant, to just another guy in Tony’s life who didn’t have a clear purpose. Tony regrets that, but a lot of their relationship was based on Tony needing that backup, that person to keep him out of trouble, and that’s not his life anymore.

They’re still friends, and Happy understands that watching over Pepper is just as important to Tony as watching over Tony had been back when they met, but they aren’t as close, and they don’t share the kind of secrets they used to. Happy isn’t with Tony every step of the way on the social scene anymore, and Tony no longer wants Happy to try to protect him, because his threats are a lot more dangerous these days than someone trying to drug his drink.

It’s put a strain on it, though they care a lot about each other, and Tony will always trust Happy unshakably. He was there through a lot of shit that even Rhodey never saw, even if he heard about it after the fact, and that leaves a mark.

As for the best memory between them? For Tony, at least, it was at one party, and the music was loud in the next room and they’d just made their way away from the crowd because Tony wasn’t feeling the best, and Happy just sat him on the couch, then sat next to him in the empty room and told Tony that he didn’t regret meeting him, and he was happy to be there. Tony never forgot that, and on days when he hesitates or wonders if he ever did anything good for anybody in his life, he remembers how _sincere_ Happy was that day and lets the thoughts go.

* * *

** The Helicarrier Argument **

**Steve:** Is this the first time you lost a soldier?  
**Tony:** We are _not_ soldiers.

Okay, I want everyone to take a moment and really think about the expression on Tony’s face vs the one on Steve’s. 

I’m not entirely sure what’s going through Steve’s head during this scene, but one thing I’m clear on is that he considers fighting units to always be a soldier situation, if only because that’s how it was presented to him, and he was trained in that way of thinking. You’re either a soldier or a civilian, and there’s not really an in between. It makes sense that he can’t see why Tony wouldn’t look at it that way himself, given where they are and the obviously military nature of it.

Tony, on the other hand, could never see it that way. He grew up in the modern era, with the layers of aid workers and civilian volunteer units. He’s had close ties with the military basically all his life, but he’s always been a step removed from it and he’s _known_ that. It’s a situation where all the question did was remind him that the answer was _yes_ and they weren’t even technically _his._ Soldiers died in Afghanistan, for _him,_ a _civilian,_ and he’ll never forget that he was not trained for that kind of combat. He’ll always remember he’s a step removed and valuable for things that mean he’d never be able to consider a soldier’s life as a viable option because he could never keep himself limited to that kind of system with a clear conscience. 

Tony has probably idealized the idea of a soldier in some ways, because they’re people who have devoted themselves entirely to the defense of their country, and he respects that. He also knows that soldiers follow orders, and if there’s one thing that the Avengers team has never been terribly good at, especially when they were first forming up, it was the order aspect of things. 

Tony also knows that none of these things apply to him, and that’s upsetting overtop of the loss of Phil and the reminder of those soldiers he _did_ lose during one of the most traumatic events in his life. So that’s why the notion of being called a soldier, even indirectly the way Steve did it, scraped him so immediately and viciously raw. 

And that's ignoring the vastly different social climate around soldiers themselves given that Steve's war was not the smaller local disputes that Tony was raised with. But that's another thing altogether.

In my opinion at least.

* * *

** Tony and Bruce's Conversation about Ultron **

**Tony:** It was supposed to learn slang, not go insane.  
**Bruce:** You're assuming it did.  
**Tony:** Look, we both know the guy has anger issues, which, not to point a finger-  
**Bruce:** We told him to solve the world.

One thing that always gets me about this, when I hear about it? Tony’s coming from the position that ‘This one, among _all_ the AIs I’ve ever created, is the only one trying to kill us all. You’re the main factor of what changed.’ Which is true. Tony looked at Bruce and went ‘I can see you in him, not just me’ and Bruce immediately tries to justify it. 

What kills me though, is that Ultron wasn’t _finished._ He hadn’t had anything like a proofreading. He was incomplete, and all the loose ends and bits of code that _shouldn’t_ have been in the final creation were still present. So yeah, I can see why Tony used the word crazy. Ultron was acting on logic, yes, but it was a broken logic that ignored the spirit of the thing for the exact thing. 

That’s a programming flaw and Tony calls it madness, which I think had been his way of excusing Bruce for his part in the debacle because when you’re programming a sentient being, you try not to give it things like this, because they cause _this kind_ of issue. This is the kind of issue that comes of giving something an exact, inescapable purpose. But Bruce doesn’t accept it being called madness, so Tony points out what else it must be.

The only AIs in the MCU that show this demented set of issues? Well, they’re the only two that were _on screen_ programmed with parameters that clearly and indisputably gave them a purpose. They were the two that were told, in code, that they had to do it to the exclusion of anything else. Honestly, it kind of makes me wonder if that ‘we’ in that last bit wasn’t more of an ‘I’ instead because Bruce realized his mistake. Yeah, Tony may have had that purpose in mind… but I expect he’d planned to _teach_ it, not hardwire it in.

Bruce, brilliant man that he is, probably didn’t understand that. After all, this is his first AI kid. He wouldn’t have known. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have mentioned something to Tony, nor that he shouldn’t have tried to defend his choices when they came to light, but it does give him the excuse that he simply didn’t know better. Not everyone has a passel of AI children in their repertoire, after all.

Still, in this, Tony knew what he was talking about, and sometimes I have to wonder if people miss that because this ended up not being in the main video. Tony takes all the blame for Ultron, yes, but it makes me step back and consider how much of the blame he feels isn’t along the lines of ‘I should have stepped in while I had the chance’ instead of ‘I made him badly’.

* * *

** **

** Tony confronting Natasha before the big Showdown **

**Natasha:** Are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one goddamn second?

The big thing that really gets me about this scene is the subtext. It’s loud, it’s uncomfortable, and it smacks of Natasha trying to go through Tony to get _him_ to fix the situation by caving in when her efforts to get Steve to do so already failed.

It’s not about ego. It’s not even about the Accords and what it stands for.

It’s about Natasha not picking a side.

In this situation, Natasha sat on the fence because she didn’t want the group to break up, and it’s not even a secret that this is the case either. She _tells_ Steve that all she wants is to have everyone together, regardless of what together entails. She has a family, and she already lost Bruce because of her own actions, to say nothing of Thor vanishing to parts unknown and not returning. It’s pretty easy to see that she doesn’t want to risk anyone _else_ finding somewhere out of her reach to be.

So, when she runs low on options and her manipulation of the situation isn’t up to standard, she decides that she’ll take the road that means that everyone might be in trouble because trying to get everyone on the side of _not_ trouble clearly didn’t work.

Which means hitting Tony, who she has _seen_ at his lowest because she can count on Tony to give in if she just figures out how to _do_ it. She knows it’s not about ego. She knows all of this is about trying to do what’s best for the world, and in spite of all that, she _really_ doesn’t care. 

To Natasha, the world isn’t what’s important now that everything has started falling apart. No, in this situation her not losing everyone is what matters. If that means going through Tony and stomping over wounds she knows are still bleeding then she’ll _do_ it. Ego was the cause of Ultron in Tony’s mind, and she knows that. It’s why people died, why _JARVIS_ died. 

So yeah, she’s using that pain, not even two years gone, to try to force him to change his position when he feels it’s honestly the best one for the _world,_ regardless of personal cost. 

That, my friends, is what this scene really means because Tony _knows that’s her position._ And there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it.


	5. Tony Serious Takes II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's views on the world and why he presents the faces he does.

**I am Iron Man**

Tony is a man who spent practically his entire career as a weapon manufacturer nose to nose with a man who was an Airforce representative. One should really consider what kind of effect this has on Tony’s views and vocabulary, at the very least. I mean, the armed forces, every branch of them, use terms and nicknames for things that you never hear from people outside of them, and Tony would have had quite a bit of exposure to them since he seems to respect those in the armed forces far more than his board. Thus, it only makes sense that he would have internalized bits of lingo as he heard it.

What does this have to do with the statement of ‘I am Iron Man’ in the title up there?

Iron, in Airforce vernacular, means bombs. There was no way that Tony was unaware of this, so when he makes that comment in IM1 about ‘Evocative Imagery’ it’s not him thinking about the suit. It’s him thinking about what else the term Iron Man could mean, most likely.

He’s always been the Airforce’s Iron Man. And, if the vernacular holds between Army and Airforce on the use of the words God and Cockroach to apply to weapon dealers, then he might very well have been called the Iron God from time to time. Cockroach, of course, would apply to Hammer since the term God only goes to the highest quality weapon manufacturers. That is definitely not Hammer.

In any case, the term Iron Man and Tony declaring and accepting it so readily has multiple layers of meaning beyond the obvious if taken this way. I am Iron Man he says, but people assume that’s just him going “Yeah, I’m a hero, this is me” but if you look at it from the angle of someone multilingual, in a manner of speaking, then it becomes something else.

I am Iron Man becomes ‘I am the man who made the bombs’.

In this sense, Tony always has been, and always will be, Iron Man, with or without the suit. In another sense, he makes it clear that he and the suit are no different, and if you consider how he acted the first time he went out, he probably has no doubt that he is as dangerous as any piece of armor. He’s killed, by then, deliberately, because there’s no way the people in Gulmira all survived the way he attacked them.

At the end of the first Iron Man movie, you see Rhodey’s reaction to the declaration of being Iron Man. He’s probably the only one in the room who could possibly understand what that declaration could _mean_ and that it could have had multiple layers of meaning at all.

His reaction is delayed, like it takes a moment to really process what he just heard, and it’s not until the rest of the room is in an uproar that he turns a wide-eyed gaze on Tony. I strongly suspect he entirely understood everything Tony meant, and not just the hero parts, even if that _was_ what he was playing up given the media had picked the name Iron Man for entirely different reasons.

So yes, Tony is Iron Man, and there’s really no way to take that away from him, regardless of anything else he is. It’s just a matter of understanding exactly how deep that goes, good and bad.

* * *

**Tony Stark and his Facade**

I’ll just take it from the top and remind everyone that my boy, and consequently my headcanons, are pretty much entirely based on the MCU because I just have no proper working knowledge of any of the comics. That means that if in the comics (by which I mean any of them, looking at you Ults) Tony’s company didn’t run mostly on weapons at any point, well, that doesn’t really have any bearing here.

No, this section is all about reminding people that Tony Stark is one _terrifying_ human being, and he _knows_ it. 

See, that’s one thing people forget in the fandom. Yes, he’s treated poorly and villainized by people who aren’t really observing the material from outside the universe, to say nothing of the people who get taken in by his facade _inside_ it. But, and this cannot be stressed enough, that facade _exists for a reason_. The facade was not an accident. The facade was not a _byproduct._

Tony Stark made _Tony Stark TM_ on purpose. He made it to disarm, to downplay, and in general to make himself less terrifying to the people he was dealing with in both personal and business circles.

You do not want the people you’re making weapons for to look at you and see the person who just gave them a new creative way to destroy a human life. You want them to look at you and see a friend and ally to the cause. You do not want the country you live in to see a monster, you want them to see a patriot who goes a little overboard from time to time.

You don’t want them to see the genius who zipped through college with degrees at the top of his class at seventeen turning that genius largely to ways to make the world a more frightening place.

So Tony was careful, and Tony built the facade. He believed in the cause. He believed he was protecting his country. He thought he was making his dad proud and Obadiah supported that, but Tony still _knew._

Tony is not unaware of the fact that when stocks dived after he closed down weapons it was largely the domestic values that crashed, as the company was suddenly being kept afloat by international sales of non-weapon items, sparse as they were. Countries outside of America probably jumped at the idea of this threat suddenly being _less of one_ and were eager to support the cause to keep him from backsliding due to his company going under. 

Tony being the mind behind the Avengers, and probably the face that other countries always thought of rather than Steve who was more a story than any real _person_ to foreign governments, was probably a major cause for the Accords. It wasn’t _Ultron._ He was an _excuse._ The idea of a Tony Stark without anything to occupy his time, who just could make god knows what and go wherever he pleased with it? 

Probably not ideal. Probably terrifying to those countries that remember the man who held the weapons industry in an iron grip for decades.

Thus, it was better to get the man under a licensing system with contracts instead of letting him roam around without anything keeping his feet on the ground. So to speak.

But coming back to the point here. Tony knows all this. He’s a smart man, and he’s a perceptive one. It may not always _seem_ like it, because of the way he and Steve constantly misread one another, but that’s more a matter of body language not matching implied meaning I think and Tony stumbling on it. After all, he had Natasha pegged within minutes of meeting her. He didn’t know _what_ he was noticing, but he noticed none the less.

So given all that, I find it laughable that people look at Tony in the fandom and see a helpless little man who can’t take care of himself. Someone who always needs to be rescued, and who poses no threat on his own.

That makes no sense at all. Even with all the new arrivals, Tony Stark is the one person in the MCU who will never, ever, _ever_ be helpless. Things go wrong, it’s kind of the tone of his _life_ since 2008, but he’ll find a way out of it, through it, and if he has help then _all the better._ Help is wonderful and cannot be overstated. 

However, that help is more of a want than a need for Tony Stark. Yes, help makes everything easier and probably means he comes out dramatically more intact than he otherwise would, but if he didn’t have that help, well, he’d find a method anyway.

Help just means that the method is less likely to mean people die when he gets himself out of whatever mess he’s landed in this time. After all, Tony’s highest personal death tolls were _always_ when he was fighting without anyone at his side. They were always when he was the last one standing or the only one on the scene.

So yeah, Tony Stark? Frighteningly competent, and I’ll thank the world to remember that from time to time.

* * *

**Tony and Death Threats**

Okay, so the last week or so I’ve been finding lots of things about Tony’s various disputes with Steve, with Bucky, even with the _sun_ practically.

Basically, it’s Tony and his way of fighting with people that I’ve been thinking about, and I’ve realized something kind of important.

When Tony plans to kill people, he never warns them. He never declares intent. He just _does_ it. That’s what he does to the Ten Rings when he deals with them. It’s how he tackles things in the fight with the Chitauri. Sure, in the latter fight they’re not _human,_ but that’s not the point. When he comes at Loki, he doesn’t tell him he’s going to kill him, he’s not angry. He’s level headed, he’s calculating, and he plays to the strengths of his team.

When he’s furious over Yinsen dying, he doesn't _warn_ them of his intentions, he just goes and does what he’s going to do. The only time he calls anyone out with intent to harm is during the Mandarin situation, and that was less a combat situation than a calculated move to make them come to _him._

It’s made me realize that Tony wouldn’t ever _threaten_ to kill someone if he ever _intended_ to actually do so. Instead, his death threats often serve as warnings of how _utterly unhappy_ he is with any given situation. He’s angry, he’s hurt, he’s ready to lash out, yes, but he isn’t actually aiming to kill. Mind, in the Mandarin situation he probably _wanted_ to, but that kind of public declaration? 

No, he’s not stupid enough to set himself up as a murderer in the public eye, intent be damned.

So, that brings the question of why I’ve come to decide this applies to all instances of threat. After all, during the fight in Siberia he looked really damn serious, right?

Well, in a way, yes, he definitely was frustrated, upset, hurt, and betrayed and wanted to beat Steve’s ass. Bucky had the misfortune of getting caught in that emotional crossfire with a target on his back because of the video.

However, please remember Tony blasted Steve in the face with a Repulsor. Please remember that the safeties on his chest reactor triggered the ability to _blast off someone’s metal arm._

The reactor has, at that point, probably an energy output of 22-25 Gigajoules per second. Allow me to put that in context, shall I? 10 GJ is enough to power a home for a _whole year_ if someone is a bit conservative. His reactor puts out more than twice that every _second._

So.

If he wanted those guys dead, his repulsors, powered by the reactor, could have done it. He can go faster than some of the _fastest jets on the planet_ using that technology. People probably don’t think about this, but the amount of pure force needed for that to happen is kind of frightening, and you don’t see people standing behind a jet do you? No.

So, Tony didn’t blow anyone’s face off. He didn’t intentionally blow a hole in _anyone._ Instead, he fought, with his fists, using his missiles on the _roof_ instead of the other combatants, and in general played a defensive offense. He didn’t go for the kill shots. He could have. He just aimed to hurt in, shall we say, punishment for his own mental state. 

Not to say that’s the best way he could have handled it, but it makes more sense than the theory he actually planned to kill anyone.

Just, you know. A thought to think about.

* * *

**Examining Tony’s Motivations**

Sometimes I think that people look at Tony Stark and think that his life had to be easy. He’s smart, rich, educated, and had a ton of opportunities, so clearly, to some people, that’s a recipe for a perfect life, right?

That’s not actually how it works. 

What he got from his father’s success was money, a legacy, a company, and all the expectations that come of being born late in someone’s life where up until then, the primary person that his parents had to focus on worrying about was themselves. He was born well after habits were established, and when carving time out of a personal schedule for a child was more hassle than joy. 

This is what Tony got from his dad, and while the man probably loved him, he’d already lived a decent life and was heading into the tail end of it when Tony came along. He’d had so long build up the image of what a child of his should be like that there was probably no way for Tony to ever actually be that mythical creature that his parents came up with. But he tried. He had the intelligence and the drive to give it a go, and while he didn’t exactly fail, he had no way to know that.

Intelligence is a curse as much as it ever is a blessing. Being that one kid that’s smarter than everyone else is isolating. If the other children aren’t avoiding you, they’re trying to get close to you to get you to help them to further themselves. It’s not just children either. Teenagers, adults, it doesn’t matter when it comes down to it. People see someone different than themselves, and they isolate. Humanity doesn’t tolerate different when different isn’t _useful,_ and Tony thus learned that the only way to be acceptable was to give when people asked, to help when someone came calling, because otherwise, he would go from useful to outsider, and being an outsider is _brutal._

He moved too fast through school, made no real friends as a child, and hit MIT by 15. The only friend it’s noted that he came away from that is Rhodey. What about others? Shouldn’t there be more, if he led a charmed life shouldn’t he have friends trailing back to his young childhood? But that’s not the case. You never hear about him keeping contact with anyone from when he was young other than Rhodey. You never see him holding onto friends he didn’t hire. 

Part of this is doubtless because he’s rich. How can you be sure of your friends if only happen to be around you because your money got them there? Can you imagine living that kind of life? Never being sure of who wants near you because of who your parents are, how much money you have, or the business you’ll be in when you’re older, and the rare people who actually want to get to know you for who you are?

When people expect things, and you give them, and keep giving them, it becomes hard to see when you’ve stopped doing it because it’s expected of you and because you want to. Obadiah is a prime case of this. The man was a master manipulator and got to Tony when he was vulnerable, played off their relationship and took control of Tony. He used the expectations against him and made him useful, pressed the point and made sure that Tony never doubted his value was in what he could do, not in who he was.

Tony grew up in this kind of environment, in a world where people he could trust at face value were practically nonexistent, and his only stable platform for basis was in what he could give the world, his friends, his family. He was smart enough people expected miracles, but he didn’t understand how those other people didn’t understand things how he did, and knew they didn’t understand _him._ It made him excellent at managing people at a distance, and he learned ways to cope and navigate, to use what people expected to give them what they wanted or needed from him.

It didn’t teach him how to trust. It didn’t teach him how to relate to people less intelligent than himself. It didn’t teach him to be open and clear with his motives and feelings. 

It taught him to always search for the hidden meanings. If there weren’t any, he would keep picking at it, looking for it, and that is something that’s been reinforced over and over. Every time he’s dared to trust, something has happened to make him doubt his own perception of events. Very few people have escaped this.

And this was before Afghanistan even happened. This was when he was still being a playboy, being that rich man who was a glorious people pleaser and had no apparent substance.

That peoples’ views on him seemed to _never change_ after he became a hero in a lot of ways? Not that shocking to Tony. People don’t like change. People like things that are comfortable, and he’s as much an example of this as a victim to it. 

So no, having things, having reputation, having _money,_ and having intelligence? These things do not make a life easy to live. 

And somehow I keep noticing that people don’t really see that.

* * *

**On Tony about Guilt and Responsibility**

Tony Stark is a man with a long reach and even better eyes. He sees how things can go in the world along certain paths. He makes choices based on what he can see, and this moves are usually sweeping, huge, and at a cost to himself.

Even when he was an arms dealer his eyes were on this bigger picture. Unfortunately, he was also an optimist. He believed that people had good intentions, and he thought that keeping his home, in this case, the USA, safe was enough. He thought that giving the armed forces what they needed to do that would be right and good and nothing bad would happen. 

Then it did, and he took responsibility for it as soon as he knew. 

When Tony makes mistakes, he always takes responsibility for them, big or small. He doesn’t tell anyone he’s dying? Next time a situation like that comes up, he doesn’t make the same mistake. He tells the relevant parties he’s not-dead.

He learns from his mistakes and tries to not make them again.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of mistakes he can make, and he’s a man afraid of the horrors he can see coming for the world.

And that, my friends, is where it all goes to hell. Tony Stark feels like the whole world is under his responsibility. He feels that the whole world is who he needs to bear up and take care of, to be the image for and the one they stomp down.

Why?

Because he is a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. I think people like to throw that phrase around and don’t stop to think about what it _means_ that that is how Tony self-identifies when the Hero pieces are stripped away. Let me break that down for you shall I?

**Genius.** The actual definition of the word is as thus: exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability. Tony is every part of this. He is an intellectual that knows he’s near the top of the ladder, that finding others at or above his level is _difficult_. He is a creator. He’s made wonders and horrors both. He’s used his strengths both for the world and unintentionally against it. He knows this is not a small burden to bear. He knows he can do more, and think of more, than some people ever dream. It just is what it is and he’s never going to forget it for an instant.

**Billionaire.** Why is this one important? Because he’s rich? Because he has money and thinks that makes him better? No. He doesn’t think he’s better. He just knows he has resources. He knows what he can do with them. He knows that they’re _important_ and not on a personal level. He employs, even if he no longer runs the company, people all around the world. He directly touches those lives and makes opportunities, influences policy, and his words carry _weight_. Money always speaks, and his speaks very loudly.

**Playboy.** Tony knows his reputation, his past, will never be shaken. People will always assume that his sleeping around and partying are the most important faces he has to present the world even if that’s not as true as it once was. He knows that he has to go above and beyond for people to see past the flippant facade and the mistakes that he’s made on a personal level over and over again, at one point without caring. They come back to bite him in the ass, as Killian proved, so it’s not as though they’re inconsequential. It doesn’t mean there also wasn’t a benefit to it, and he met a lot of people in his life that way.

**Philanthropist**. Going back to definitions here: a person who seeks to promote the welfare of others, especially by the generous donation of money to good causes. Tony sees himself that way. Tony is not a man who does half measures. If he thinks that he does this, that this is something that’s part of his core self, then that means that _he does it big, and he does it often_. Tony wants to help people. Tony fights to make the world better. Tony just doesn’t always know _how._

As a Hero, Tony has literally laid his own life at the feet of the people. He’s taken on things he shouldn’t have on his own, and he’s fought to make himself into a person the public is willing to accept in that role. It’s heavy, it’s hard, and he’s willing, no matter how much it hurts, to keep going. He _needs_ to keep going because it’s the most direct path to use what he has to offer to fix things.

Nothing says the rest stopped. Nothing says he doesn’t burn at both ends trying to work from both the public hands-on angle and the private, hands off anonymous one. Nothing even remotely hints that he no longer sees himself as he saw himself in that argument. 

No, he’s just made more mistakes, stepped up his game, and reached too far. And it bit him. It nearly snapped off his fingers and he _learned._ And then he acted. He won’t ever stand by as his mistakes cause harm. He’ll always step up and take the plate for it. He’ll never brush it off onto anyone else, even if sometimes it wasn’t as much his fault as he believed it was. 

Tony Stark always admits his mistakes, even if no one is around to hear it, and he always, _always_ does his level best to fix them.

Eventually, that didn't work out, but it didn't stop him from doing it anyway.


	6. NSFW and Physical detail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony in the realm of physical reactions to things, how good his senses are, and things of a general sexual nature.

**Sensory Details**

**Scent:** Tony, well, he’s got several layers when it comes to scent, so we’ll start at the bottom and work our way up.

Tony always has an underlying tone of ozone to him. It’s very faint and sharply metallic, but this is from the arc reactor. If it’s off, for some god awful reason, this scent doesn’t vanish, though the coconut tinge over the whole thing would. He likes to use tea tree shampoo and orange-mint soap.

Tony has two stages after this, Public face and Private face.

If he’s been in Public and has been dealing with the media, politics, or specific business people, he will be wearing cologne. It will be low-key, woody, and he’d almost definitely have the scent of makeup on him. He prefers the ones which are more mineral based on his skin, so it’s probably going to have that kind of tang. In situations where it’s viable, and happened before the birthday of 2010, he’s probably had a drink, and Scotch being his favorite makes it the most likely scent. However, champagne is equally likely. If it’s after 2010 he will have switched to tea and bubbly juice that passes, so please keep this in mind. 

If he’s been in Private, working in his shop, sparring, or just not caring, he’ll probably have the sharp clear scent of metal and engine grease on him. Even just lingering around in his workshop is usually enough for this, because Dum-E will cozy up to him when Tony is doing nothing more than just tinkering with holograms.

Please note in any situations with a reactor before his Badassium one (he will not change the name and you cannot make him) in 2011 will have instead of coconut a much more sour note to his scent that is far less pleasant.

* * *

**Sounds:** Tony chatters, so his baseline sounds are probably a lot more than is readily obvious.

First up, after the events of Christmas following the Avengers, with the Mandarin, Tony’s chest sounds different than it did before. Before the Mandarin and his following surgery, there was a subtle, persistent grind of bone on metal because his ribs were grinding against the casing of his reactor. Afterward, this is gone, as his bones were secured into the new casing during the surgery.

Tony always takes slow, shallow breaths. It’s not obvious, because he takes care that they’re even, but he has decreased lung capacity, and this will always impact his ability to breathe. When he’s distressed or has been very active, he still does his level best to make completely sure to keep a grip on his breathing, even when it’s fast, because otherwise, he won’t get enough air.

His heart rate, ever since Afghanistan, has always been faster than normal.

The reactor, no matter the model, _Hums._ It’s a soft, low noise and is a deep enough pitch that it doesn’t grate while being quiet enough most people have to put their cheek on it to even notice.

* * *

**Taste:** Tony is way too involved with his technology, and because of this, there is always the faintest metallic taste on his skin. It’s not so strong as to be unpleasant and is cleaner because of his tendency toward high-grade materials.

It should also be noted that there is no escaping his kisses tasting like coconut. He just _does._ If it’s before his last reactor, you’re more likely to get the tang of alcohol.

* * *

**Feel:** Tony has two things that really set him apart. 

First, his skin is a little softer than the average person, because he’s always had access to a hell of a lot of pampering. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t have callouses, because he does, and not just a few either. It just means that how they’re placed means they’re not usually noticed by visual cues. 

Tony has a higher than normal body temperature. This wasn’t true before Afghanistan, but his body reacted to the constant energy cycling of the reactor by bringing his temperature up. He’s since gotten used to it, and only ever notices when someone comments, which is almost never. This has also resulted in him perpetually having warm hands even in the dead of winter, so he doesn’t bother with gloves for practical reasons.

* * *

**Sight:** Tony is 5′9″ tall, with dark brown, almost black hair, and light brown eyes. Just so there’s no confusion. 

He’s also got hella muscles because he can and does manually lift heavy pieces of technology himself on a regular basis. Sure, he can be patient, but he honestly doesn’t usually bother if it’s something he can move himself. His hair has a tendency to curl when it gets more than a couple inches long, which most people never see.

His scars are often expertly concealed, and mostly stay hidden under his clothes in any case. No one will ever accuse Tony of not being fit, at the very least.

* * *

**Other Abilities:** One side effect of the element Tony created is that it interferes with magic. If applied directly to it, it washes off harmlessly, dispersing, but if bypassed, the effects will have a definite diminishing return with each successive application. 

It should be noted that mind readers would probably have a slightly different time tracking Tony’s thought processes than normal because he tends to run on multiple mental paths at once. This means that he might be thinking of some project on one level, a different project on the next while contemplating his breakfast options, all the while his attention might be on something else entirely.

Neither of these makes him impervious to mental attack, but it certainly means that things are a little odd for the people doing it.

* * *

**NSFW Sexually Oriented Details**

Tony has slept with many, many people in his life. He cannot number them for you, though he can easily say that he’s been with more women than men. He can also say he’s always done his level best to please them, no matter what, once he had them because he really does like making sure his partners are satisfied when they leave him or he leaves them.

* * *

Tony only shares a bed with people he trusts overnight if he’s sleeping. If he doesn’t trust you, once he’s done, he may linger, but he won’t _sleep._ Waking up alone for one night stands was practically the norm. However, not sleeping doesn’t mean not touching, and he is highly prone to after sex cuddles if he hasn’t been struck by inspiration mid-coitus. Alternately, if he goes to sleep with you in a platonic sense, trust or not, he’s really not expecting sex come morning.

* * *

Speaking of, for Tony, sex is one of those activities that he doesn’t have to think about most of the time. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s content to follow directions. In fact, this is one time where he tends to _happily_ follow directions. 

Of course, because his mind is for once not really engaged the same way as it otherwise would be, he’s been known to get suddenly distracted and in his twenties had the unfortunate habit of writing equations all over his partners mid-sex. He’s since learned that his partners don’t usually _like that._

Which means that these days he’ll satisfy his partner ASAP and lunge for a tablet or paper or _something_ instead. Unless it’s another scientist because he’s pretty sure they wouldn’t mind. Non-scientists, well, they’d have to ??? at him before it’d come up, probably.

* * *

Tony, after Afghanistan, is not okay having sex in a tub, shower, pool, or any other thing with water in it. He actually used to _really enjoy_ this before Afghanistan, so he’s actually somewhat bitter that the notion now gives him panic attacks.

Similarly, anything that even teases the line of consent issues had better be heavily discussed with lots of safety precautions put in place beforehand. He will never risk someone not being able to say stop or no in some fashion, not even in the middle of some kind of scene someone asked him for. 

Playing with sensory deprivation is iffy for similar reasons, though he will not countenance anything that makes him unable to breathe for any reason, though he’s found that collars he’s in control of the tightness for give him no problems.

* * *

Sweet talking him. Tony will be flustered and uncomfortable if you come at him with compliments and soft kisses, but he’ll also cave because he’ll want to see where you’ll take it. He’s not very good at accepting these things at face value, and even if he likes it, his uncertainty will usually invoke some degree of sarcasm as he tries to deflect the attention to something more reasonable. It’s been known to be a serious romance killer.

On the other hand, he’s perfectly happy sweet talking someone _else_ and is liable to turn the tables hard and completely overwhelm his partner should they falter in their doing it to him. Or just spring it on them completely unprovoked, this too is a thing he’ll do.

* * *

Tony doesn’t like being vulgar to people in bed. He never calls people whores, sluts, worthless, or anything of that nature in bed. It makes him uncomfortable to try doing so on request and it’s one of those things he just can’t bring himself to give someone.

* * *

Tony has spent years examining the human body. He knows how to recognize a good reaction from a bad one and is extremely sensitive to kinds of twitches that mean someone liked something. This means he’s really good at making his partners feel good using his touch or mouth alone.

He likes to explore, to revel in his partner, and to learn _everything_ about what they like. This includes, sometimes, seeing how many times he can get someone off in a night if they’re into that.

* * *

Tony’s got a nice, average sized cock as a guy, nothing overly large or overly small, without any real lean. 

As a lady, she’s got a rather small chest and is more slim and muscled than anything, and has zero problems with this. 

He’s got a lovely ass either way.

* * *

Tony has rather good endurance, even with him getting older. He bemoans his lost recovery time though, and some nights can only go once, which means he focuses extra hard on the other person if he’s feeling tired. On a good night he can manage up to three, maybe, but the recovery time is sometimes as much as an hour if it happens at all.

* * *

Tony’s hands are sensitive to touch, especially along the backs of them, though he notices people almost never touch them in a sexual way. Similarly, his face rarely gets much attention in spite of being another zone he deeply enjoys having attention paid in a sexual way. His jaw, the backs of his thighs, and the base of his spine, by contrast, get absolutely lavished in attention.

* * *

The area around the reactor is actually extremely sensitive, but he’s so paranoid about it that it’s hard for him to actually enjoy it.

* * *

Foreign languages during sex only turn him on if he can understand them. If he can’t, then he better be totally in control or things might go a little sideways as he tries to figure out how to handle it.

* * *

Tony is willing to try anything a partner asks that won’t trigger a panic attack. Unfortunately, the list of what things will do that keeps _growing._ It’s kind of pissing him off.

* * *

Tony likes to watch faces during sex. Seeing bliss on someone, be it body flushing, glazed eyes, or other physical expressions of appreciation, does more for him than hearing a groan or being touched back, in terms of gratification at least.

* * *

Tony likes people sticking marks on his skin. Not from one night stands usually, but from lovers? He’ll love having handprints on his hips, or hickeys on his neck, even claw marks down his back. He’ll wear them like badges of victory and regret _nothing._

He’d happily return the favor if his partner expressed interest, of course.

* * *

Given Tony’s sexual orientation, Asexual, getting him in the mood in the first place is an exercise in care. He’s very reactive, and physical contact is liable to rouse his body, but trying to flirt and throw innuendo at him is unlikely to do a thing for him. If he’s already horny, well, that’s easy, but knowing when that is is all a matter of knowing _Tony,_ so everyone gets a good luck on that one.

Regardless of this, he’s very often willing to attend to someone else’s desires, most especially when he cares about them.


	7. Tony and Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the things about Tony's brood and the way he grew up himself. Also, Pepper and Pregnancy.

**Birthdays of the Brood**

Please note that in 2010 Tony was dying and thus his naming approach was slightly broken. Also, only AI interfaces get long names. Obviously. Except for Karen because Tony let Peter name her. Bots, on the other hand, just clung to whatever they found funny and started responding to, to Tony's dismay. Also, this only counts kids he had a hand in making, not adoptees.

 **Dum-E:** March 15th, 1987  
**JARVIS** (Just A Really Very Intelligent System): April 12th, 1992  
**Butterfingers:** July 27th, 1994  
**U:** November 17th, 1996  
**FRIDAY** (Feedback Rerouting Interface Disrupting Arbitrary Yelling): February 27th, 2010 (Not the day she was integrated into active systems, that was in 2015 on May 5th, the day she was initially finished)  
**TADASHI** (Technologically And Digitally Applied System Home Interface): April 3rd, 2010 (Finished but unactivated)  
**JOCASTA** (Jurisdiction Over Calls And Secretary Traffic Absurdities): December 15th, 2010 (Finished but unactivated)  
**Veronica:** August 9th, 2014  
**Ultron** (Unassisted Lead Technology Reliant On Nothing): May 4th, 2015  
**Vision:** May 5th, 2015  
**Karen:** August 7th, 2016  
**Morgan Stark:** November 16th, 2019 (and named by her mother Pepper.)  
**Edith** (Even Dead I'm The Hero): May 10th. 2023

* * *

**Tony, Pepper, and Babies**

As we all know, I periodically overthink things. In this case, my overthinking is from me seeing a discussion a couple of months ago about Pepper, her likely canon age, and what it means for her having a baby.

On the one side, people had excellent points about how if she was Tony’s age that that could be dangerous. I mean, that’s a real-world concern. Of all character arcs, Tony’s tends to address that the most so it makes sense that people who write Tony and Pepper would take this into account more than most. On the other side seemed to be people who didn’t care so much about those concerns, and just wanted to enjoy their writing in their own ways, which was entirely fair. Something about that argument seemed incomplete to me though. I mean, it makes no sense for Tony to _canonly_ push for a baby if he thought it would be dangerous to Pepper, right?

So, rather than jumping into the discussion when I saw it, I put it aside to let myself muse over it for a while, sorting out what needed to be sorted for it all to make sense.

Which, I have to say, worked out _splendidly._

The answer is incredibly obvious, and I think the only reason it didn’t come up in the debate I saw is incredibly simple. People undervalue IM3. They mentally skim over and forget about the plot points because they didn’t like what the movie had to say about Tony, Pepper, their relationship, and what PTSD means for both sufferers and the family therein.

It’s understandable that the superhero parts of the plot got lost in the cracks because of this.

Namely, Extremis.

Guys. 

_Extremis._

You know, the DNA optimization that _fixes all health issues?_

You know, the thing that made Killian go from rickety depressed stalker to incredibly healthy persuasive stalker? Albeit with fire-breathing thrown in.

Yeah, so that’s a canon thing Pepper had happen. Basically, any wear and tear from being an older woman would have been washed clean, bringing her to her optimal state of health as an adult. Even if the Extremis was removed when it was fixed, it didn’t suddenly make her body more aged again. As of 2018, that was not even six years ago. 

Basically, Pepper is a woman as old as her late 40s living in the body of someone in their mid to late _20s._

In other words, Tony’s got a _very excellent_ partner for having babies with right now. She was already ideal for him on a mental level, and now that he’s settled down enough to look at the baby thing with ‘yes please’ eyes, she’s physically in a good place to do it because of the whole revitalizing effect of the Extremis. 

Ultimately, it’s down to if Pepper _wants_ to go for it, rather than if Pepper _can._

And that, my friends, concludes this overthinking session.

* * *

**Mentor vs Parent**

Now, we all know that Tony has the tendency to adopt kids in his sphere of influence. This is true of MCU Tony, Comic Tony, and Cartoon Tony. I, of course, will only be speaking for MCU Tony here as I don’t handle those, but I’ve seen it in gifs as well as panels, and I’d like to clarify that behavior for everyone given something that I don’t think people think about too much.

Obadiah Stane. 

No, hear me out. It’s important.

Whether you ascribe to the idea of the Jarvises being alive in Tony’s childhood or not, we can all agree that when Tony lost his parents, he probably did not handle it remotely well. He’d lost his parent figures in one fell swoop, leaving him with a company that he was barely finished being educated enough to take on, and a fortune that he probably had no idea how to handle at all. 

In the instance of the Jarvis couple having been alive when Tony was young, it’s very likely that they died at some point before his parents did due to issues that came with age. After all, one should keep in mind that of all the parent figures in Tony’s life, most of them were from the same era. All save one were born early enough to serve in WWII, to be _adults_ in WWII. Even Peggy, the youngest of the five between the Jarvises and Starks, was still only a few years younger than Steve.

Most people just don’t live past their 70s, in good health or not, if they had a rough start to life. Ana, at the very least, was _rescued_ from her country of origin, and we all know that Howard wasn’t exactly the most careful man. That he lived to his 70′s at all was probably a miracle. It’s possible that Maria was younger, possibly even as young as her 50′s, but her and Howard died together, as we all know, so that’s a moot point.

What it all comes down to is that those four possible parent figures were gone before Tony was ready to be independent of them, and for my Tony, in particular, this is even worse since it all happened by the time he was 17. For most versions of the man, there was a four-year buffer more, but it still comes down to one thing. 

The only person he was able to rely on was Obadiah Stane. Obie. His mentor and touchstone. Even in the timelines people have where Peggy was his godmother, she was busy with SHIELD at that time, to say nothing of the fact she was much _older_ than Obadiah. When he died in IM1, he was 60 years old. That makes him a good 30 years younger than any other parent figure in Tony’s life.

It makes him more relatable, the age gap less extreme. It makes it easier to see why and how the man, who would have been in his late thirties or early 40s on the deaths of the Starks, was in a perfect position to just… step in.

He was a mentor, and even if he turned on Tony in the end, he still put a lot of time and care into making sure that Tony didn’t completely self-destruct before then, and would be an active and productive asset to the company. Put bluntly, he was more of a parent to Tony than Howard ever acted, simply because he stayed involved, showed he cared, even if that might have been largely a lie.

In Tony’s mind, even if he never _thinks_ about it, that’s how it works. Your Mentor becomes another parent in your life. They take care of your best interests even when you don’t because someone needs to be the responsible party. They fill a gap where a parent should be and isn’t, either because they’re dead or just were _never around._

So for Tony, the line is a little hazy between a parent and a mentor. They fill the same role in someone’s life, and even if one gets the title of dad, that doesn’t make the other one less important. It doesn’t make them less valuable. 

And, most importantly from Tony’s perspective, it doesn’t make the responsibility any less heavy.

A mentor is just a parent who chose to be there, in Tony’s mind, so of _course_ he’s going to act like it. He won’t be his dad, failing at every turn. He won’t be Obadiah who made him doubt himself and depend on him more and more until he was tied up in knots. He won’t even be Edwin who was proper but a little distant because he didn’t feel it was his place to be a parent. He’ll be himself, and he’ll take the best of what he ever saw in his parent figures, the bits of them that _he_ most cherished, and he’ll offer _that_ to the kids he takes under his wing.

He’ll be the best damn mentor he can be, and if that looks a hell of a lot like ‘dad’ to everyone else, well. That’s just how Tony Stark rolls.

* * *

**Heritage and Circumstances**

I got off onto a rant in conversation about how people don’t tend to want to recognize Tony’s PTSD as what it is, and it spiraled down into a dizzying mess where all I could think was that yes, Howard Stark is irrefutable of Jewish stock, and this has dramatically affected how Tony approaches and handles the world.

Now, I haven’t read the comics, but I do know a few things just from talking to those who have and interacting with characters from that universe. From those people, I know that Tony is an alcoholic over there. He comes from a family who already had money when his dad became a businessman. He’s got blue eyes and black hair that he inherited, along with height, from his dad. He’s got hella self-esteem issues and a bit of a god complex that is worse in some timelines than others.

Pretty much every bit of that is different in the MCU. 

First, I would like to present you guys with something that Howard said to Peggy during the Agent Carter run, as a basis for some of the speculation that sparked off into this greater analysis:

_“I grew up on the Lower East Side. My father sold fruit. My mother sewed shirtwaists for a factory. Let me tell you, you don’t get to climb the American ladder without picking up some bad habits on the way. There’s a ceiling for certain types of people based on how much money your parents have, your social class, your religion, your sex. And the only way to break through that ceiling sometimes is to lie, so that’s my natural instinct to lie. I shouldn’t have lied to you. For that, trust me, I am truly sorry.”_

So, firstly, a little history. The Lower East Side was always an immigrant area, but especially when Howard was a kid in the MCU’s timeline, it was largely a _Jewish_ community. Howard, especially when he’s young, very much has that look, with brown hair and dark eyes, so it’s not farfetched to believe that he was among this group of people. How he describes his parents in this little monologue only solidifies the likelihood of this being true.

This, in turn, ultimately led to Howard putting away any lingering religious beliefs he had so he could focus on who, and _what,_ he needed to be to get somewhere in the social climate of the time. It took him luck, skill, and no small amount of creativity to go from a poor Jewish boy to successful American inventor and national staple. 

That’s not to say Tony never knew. I can’t imagine he never asked about his heritage, and even if Howard didn’t tell him, it’s very likely that one of the Jarvises did, so that Tony could make his own decision about how to handle the situation. Clearly, he chose to not follow that faith, but that doesn’t mean it has no impact on his life as a greater whole.

Howard Stark, in a world where he knew hardship and didn’t have his business handed to him, or funds ready to access, would have learned to work for it. He would have learned that you can’t just expect things to happen by themselves and that you had to be patient to get what you wanted. Basically, he learned that nothing comes for free, and I suspect this is a lesson the Howard Stark of the 616 universe never learned, and subsequently took out on his son.

MCU Tony hasn't abused the same way 616 Tony was. Neglected by a busy father, certainly, but there was no doubting that Howard in the MCU wasn’t framed in a way that makes him turning into an alcoholic make any sense. He wasn’t a rich businessman who spent his free time drinking around. He was a guy who turned his spare time into running a spy organization where he had to keep his focus. He was definitely a tough man that learned to not be affectionate, yes. Absentminded and distracted, in spades. Harsh and loud? Unfortunately likely. However, he wouldn’t have expected Tony to be perfect the way 616 Howard did. He grew up knowing that you have to work hard to overcome life’s pitfalls, and I expect he did his best to pass that along to Tony, whatever his failings might have been.

Tony didn’t let things sit, even when he was off making a mess of himself going from place to place and party to party, he still kept bettering himself, and building up the company. This is simply true, given the way his history is presented in the MCU. Yes, he was reckless, and it’s clear he _did_ grow up with money, which had an effect on him, but he also had those niggling values that pushed him to keep advancing, keep improving.

And, of course, once the guilt got triggered off, to take responsibility with no further prompting and take care of the whole freaking world. Interesting note here about that. Tony could have let SHIELD cover for him. They wanted to, they set him up to. Tony couldn’t do it. Tony had to take the reigns and say ‘no, this is me, I’m doing these things’. I suspect this was also because of his heritage, in part, and a need to say ‘look at me’ while simultaneously pinning a sign on himself saying ‘I’m responsible.’

And, of course, let it not be said that the change in Tony’s looks can’t come from a change in his dad as well, but that, at least, is fairly straightforward. Ultimately, it’s all a shift in priorities, a shift in what he found acceptable and didn’t because of the change in the examples he was given as a child that makes MCU Tony so different from 616, when it comes down to it.

They’re the same guy, yes, but they’re also different guys, with different issues and different priorities. So, that’s about all I have to say about that.


	8. Greater World Concerns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MCU Mental Health and notes on the contrasts between MCU and the comics. On a Tony level.

**The MCU and Mental Health**

When one looks at the MCU, the first thing people see is a whole lot of characters who aren’t well adjusted to _anything._ Steve wasn’t eased into the future with anything resembling grace and still reacts like he’s about to head off to war. Tony has PTSD that everyone, even someone who should know better, ignores as though it doesn’t exist. We just won’t touch Natasha or Bruce with this one, and Clint is a family man whose wife seems to be the voice of sanity.

And that’s not even getting into the extended roster. 

Deleted scenes and the one mention Tony makes as a _revelation_ to Bruce about how talking about things _helps_ and maybe he should do more of that are the only clues we have about how mental health is handled. That Tony in _Homecoming_ of all things, seems to have been at a healing retreat in _India_ is strangely _support_ to my theory.

The theory in question?

HYDRA’s position in SHIELD screwed the mental health care system. 

You see, it all comes down to the ultimately simple concept that those that are fully mentally sound are harder to control, and thus not what you want in your populace. You want people you can nudge the way you want them to go, and you want people who have no support structure who you can swoop in and _save_ from that. HYDRA, having stretched their wings into nearly every level of people in a large chunk of the world, was in a position to _be_ those rescuers.

First, however, they had to put a stigma on mental health and keep it there. Steve, the poor man, probably _helped_ with this goal, because of _course_ if it was _Captain America_ then the man was never traumatized or needed help with anything, and didn’t everyone want to be like _that_ children? Further, as SHIELD grew, so too did the pool of people who _needed_ mental health care, but I fully expect that what everyone ended up in it was more for checks of ‘good enough?’ rather than to talk out their issues because of _confidentiality._ And of _course,_ no one was encouraged to talk to their families about what they did, ever. That would have been ridiculous, right?

The thing is, things like this, over the course of the better part of a _century,_ have time to grow, to gain momentum, and to become something dangerous that reaches people even outside the direct sphere of the initial thinker.

As to why the India retreat was considered proof toward this theory? Why _else_ would Tony have to go to another country, one where _religion_ is behind the source of healing if he thought he would be able to find anyone he trusted back in the States?

He wouldn’t. He’s a busy guy, and if he had the _options,_ then why would he have to go abroad where he’d be away from everything? If it had been a vacation, that’d be one thing, but India? No. That wasn’t a vacation.

So yeah, thanks HYDRA, you screwed up the populace. Thumbs up for you.

* * *

**Comics and the MCU**

In the years I’ve been writing MCU Tony, I’ve noticed things about how the characters are _different_ than their Comic counterparts. I don’t read the comics, mind, but by this point, I’ve had enough exposure and interacted with enough people who _are_ from those verses, that I’ve reached some conclusions.

 _Interesting_ conclusions. 

The short of it is this: MCU Howard is basically Comic Tony if he’d been born in a different era.

Now I’ll throw out the long-range version of this. See, this thought started several months ago when talking to someone who writes MCU Howard and Ults Tony. I write with both, and they do a _wonderful_ job with their characters, so I agree they know what they’re talking about. Many of the things I love about how they play their Howard are things that are rather universal to MCU Howards I’ve dealt with over the years, so it’s hardly just _theirs._

You see, we were talking about Tony vs Tony and just how the different _types_ of Tony usually are entirely dependent on where a Tony comes from, and how bewildering it is to see Comic things thrown overtop an MCU Tony. Because MCU Tony is a different creature. Yes, they all have the armor in common, that’s a Tony Stark thing, but there are many _many_ things that are different between them.

So, I’ll start at the beginning and let you draw your own conclusions, shall I?

The very first, most pivotal thing that pops into my head is _Steve._

MCU Tony views Steve as an aggravating friend slash brother figure that he had to live up to as a kid that his dad _adored._ He trusts him right up until he can’t, and he expects it to be reciprocal when it clearly _isn’t._ Yes, there is mutual respect, but they’re not actually _close,_ and while Steve would trust Tony to defend the Earth, he never once considers he might come down on his side when it comes to defending a _friend._

Comic Tony, from what I understand, is a _whole other animal_ in Steve’s general direction. They’re close, they have an unwavering bond, they count on one another even when they’re at odds, and Tony actively loves and is somewhat of a Cap fanboy, a sentiment which is returned to a degree. In essence, from the word go, Tony was on Steve’s side and did everything he could for him, because of course. On top of all this, he looked for Steve for a long time before finding him, because _that was just what he needed to do._

Now I’m going to point out MCU _Howard’s_ view on Steve. Howard was instant friends with Steve when they met up properly, and there was a touch of proprietary affection there because Howard helped make him into the person he was. He was his friend, they joked with one another, trusted one another unshakably, and when Howard lost Steve it affected him for the rest of his life. He searched for him in every spare moment, something which affected his relationship with his _son._ He loved him and practically says as much during the Agent Carter series, which is a point that can’t be stressed enough. 

So, moving on from that point to point two. 

The Company.

Now, I’m a little hazier on Comic Tony’s position on a lot of things to do with this one, and I can’t for the life of me remember if he shut down weapons like MCU Tony did. Was that a thing? If he did, it was certainly far later up the timestream, and definitely not when he came back because he kept Iron Man’s identity a secret. I _do_ know that he built world ending horrors of weapons because he felt it was the best way to deal with certain problems. We also know that he was a very _very_ astute businessman who _enjoyed_ that part of the company, and never actually let go of it while he had a choice about it, because _why would he?_

We all know MCU Tony got out of the weapon business pretty much at his first real _reason_ to, and never hid being Iron Man. He stopped building horrors on purpose (yes, I admit that Ultron was fumbled badly but he had help with that one), and basically turned to defense rather than offense as his primary weapon. Of course, then there’s the whole ‘here Pepper have my company’ thing which we can all agree that Comic Tony would probably _never_ have done. Not while he was still alive or capable anyway.

And then we have Howard in the MCU. Howard who builds weapons he calls ‘bad babies’ and hides away because of their sheer destructive possibility, who built his company from nothing because it was something he _wanted._ Howard who ran the company for more than forty years without even seeming to give a hint he’d hand it over to Tony before someone pried it out of his cold dead hands. Howard who was comfortable with the idea of being in a war and staying on that track even after though his first love was _planes,_ once upon a time.

Speaking of love, that brings me to point three of this mess. 

Relationships. 

Everyone knows that Comic Tony is a relationship _disaster._ He’s a serial dater, with many long and short relationships in his past that usually ended badly for one reason or another. He has a rather vigorous sex life, he takes bets and is comfortable wandering down the street naked because of them, and in general he never really stops, though he’s devoted as can be when he’s _with_ someone.

MCU Tony, while having been _with_ a lot of people, never really _dated._ Sure, he’d have one night stands, and the fact that he calls Maya an ‘ex-girlfriend’ because of one says a _lot_ about how ill-equipped he is when he gets serious with Pepper. He’s never done this before, and he has _no idea_ what he’s supposed to do. He’s loyal, devoted, and generally content to run with it once he’s there, but it’s still his first real relationship, and that _matters._

Now, back to MCU Howard. In Agent Carter, we learn _very_ quickly that he has a _wild_ sex life, he dates people all the time at varying amounts of intensity, and eventually he ends up with Maria, his wife, and has his son, who never sees his dad’s wild party side, so we can only presume that Maria might very well be why he _stopped._ After all, Howard used to regularly throw parties and invite in a bunch of half-naked women to run around at the drop of a hat. While not orgies, one _should_ account for the times.

And then the last point. Superhero nonsense and SHIELD.

Comic Tony ends up in charge of an organization _like_ SHIELD briefly, SWORD which I hear was British, as well as SHIELD itself at some point. He’s political, he’s meticulous, and he goes out of his way to make sure that the superhero community is sorted out. He’s one of two people who really got the superhero ball _rolling._ In essence, he’s a very important person in the super spy and superhero arenas. He _likes_ being in charge of all that, and he has an aptitude for it that he _uses._

MCU Tony, bless his heart, is not a politician. He wants nothing to do with running a spy anything, barely wants to be involved with the team at first at _all_ , and most certainly is not a politician. If he was a politician, there was no _way_ he would have been so far behind the curve with the Accords. The poor man had no idea what was going on until _far_ too late to do anything about it. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t _trying,_ but he was late to the game, and out of his depth. He’s a businessman, not a politician, and it shows.

MCU Howard, well, let’s just start with him having been accused of _treason_ and still coming out the other side with enough clout to build SHIELD in the first place, shall we? Who does that? He’s a consummate liar, self-admitted, who does anything and everything he must to get where he feels he needs to be. This doesn’t make him a bad man, no, but it _does_ make him ruthless, a trait that his son simply isn’t as good at and Comic Tony _is._

Conclusion, when looking at all this?

MCU Howard is a reflection of Comic Tony. We don’t know what his childhood was like, how good or bad it was, and yes, he wasn’t a very expressive parent to Tony, but he didn’t hurt him either, and we don’t see anything that indicates that he was a drunk the way Comic Howard was. No, he was more likely a severely awkward product of his times that learned to not be as open as he’d been when he was young, which is, interestingly, something that MCU Tony learns as the MCU goes on as well. We can see that in progress.

MCU Howard takes many of Comic Tony’s best traits, and sometimes his worst ones as well, and uses them. They were just set in another era, one with different values than even Comic Tony would have had to deal with, and shaped the man who ended up with them differently. 

All of these Starks are still Starks, they’re still all ridiculous, liable to be kidnapped geniuses, but when people throw down a bunch of Comic Tony headcanons all over MCU Tony it doesn’t make sense, because they’re rather different people. Now, if you look at it from the perspective of MCU Howard being the reflection of Comic Tony, and MCU Tony being the product of _that_ legacy, it’s a different, far more fascinating story.

Sure, the name Tony Stark is still irrevocably linked to the title of Iron Man, but the hows and whys and _approach_ differ wildly, as well as how it’s handled. The core things of who the characters themselves _are_ is a little more important than just what they _do,_ I think, and I thank you all for reading this fascinating parallel that’s become obvious to me over time. 

And that my friends, is all I’ll say about that. For the moment anyway.

P.S. Edwin Jarvis. Enough said.


	9. Stark Industries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A memo, some employees, and a lot of business detail.

** The Memo **

**To:** All Employees, All Departments, All Branches  
 **From:** Tony Stark [You know who I am]  
 **Subject:** Clarifying ID badges and What They Do  
[The Picture, as deemed to be too big to not be a click away.](https://66.media.tumblr.com/b89b7274989e95b3450f63070019d529/tumblr_ouotuxkrWI1vod3qio1_1280.png)

* * *

**Some Stark Industries Employees**

**Caroline Jones**  
An unassuming woman who in most verses heads up the user interface and games segment of the reworked Stark Industries, keeping her attention on phones and their abilities. Before this she was part of the strategic parts of SI that dealt with cooperative programming systems for missiles and similar.

She has black hair that’s pin straight and usually half hides her face, bright blue eyes that always look a little too wide, glasses, and a tendency to wear business attire at all times, skirts, and heels. Even in casual settings. She’s soft-spoken and often, her people quiet when she’s talking.

**Janet Mendez**  
This woman has been a housekeeper in Tony’s life since about two months after the Malibu house was completed. Having met Tony when she was also in her young twenties as JARVIS’ first hire, there have been considerable growing pains associated with their time together. She’s the only member of his original personal staff that’s still with him, and is in charge of hiring, vetting, and training all housekeepers for any location that Tony might potentially live in for any span of time, including the Tower, the Malibu House, and all facilities designated as being for the Avengers.

She has both dark hair and eyes and has a meticulous habit of ensuring that everything Tony needs in his personal life is handled when the AIs can’t do it themselves. She has nothing to do with his business endeavors or scheduling and instead keeps all her tasks to making sure there’s food wherever Tony lives currently, that he has the clothes he values most available, and that nobody does anything to stress the man by way of the staff.

**Masao Ishikawa**  
Tony’s head Tax Lawyer that he managed to poach before the man got committed to any Japanese firms. He even went to the extra lengths to pay for his move to the United States, though the man does visit home relatively often, typically bringing along Iron Man trinkets that he thinks Tony might enjoy that were given by his brother for exactly that purpose. Once the ‘trinket’ was an authentic full samurai outfit that Tony didn’t ask too many questions about the origins of. 

He was hired on during the post-Obadiah betrayal purge in 2009 when most of the legal team ended up replaced. The man loves the challenge that the Avengers pose simply because they’re _unusual_ and working out things such as Steve’s situation and how Thor and money go together keeps him more than busy enough when SI somehow fails to be enthralling enough.

His origins are very clear, though he tends to wear his hair long and tied back, and it’s not uncommon to see him in glasses.

**William Travers**  
This fellow is a wonder in the Public Relations department. If something goes wrong, he’s on it, if something is on fire, he can spin it, and he never hesitates to have his people on the job whenever the newest situation explodes. One of the few departments unshaken by Tony’s staff review in 2009, William has seen it all. 

He’s an older man, once known by the name Cindy before Tony took charge of the company, and he’s a born and bred Californian that was hired on when Howard was still running things. He’s not being pried away from the California branch of the company until the day he dies and that’s that. He considers himself far too old for that nonsense.

**Madison Harris**  
This woman is a whirlwind and wonder in Tony’s life. She’s also terrifying. She’s Tony’s top accountant, and never let the hellfires that are errors that lead to dramatic losses happen on her shift, oh no. This woman was hired a year after Pepper, swiftly working her way up the ranks of the company until she stood at the top of the financial heap and meticulously fixed every hole she could find.

Suffice to say that Obadiah had some trouble maneuvering around her. 

Dark skinned with a perpetual pair of ponytails to contain her wild hair, Madison is ever the professional, even if her suits do tend to err toward the brightly colored. They look good on her, and she has enough clout that people only ever dare say something once before deciding it would be in their best interest to never do so again.

* * *

**Business Details**

Tony’s PA contracts have always been intensely comprehensive. They covered everything from permanent life insurance with the company, even after leaving the job by their choice or Tony’s, due to the hazards of being close to Tony and thus at risk of abduction by competitors or rogue factions to try to get information on what he was doing. Other points listed in these contracts were rights of severance, negotiated codes of contact, and provisional warnings on behaviors Tony knew he tended to have and use that he had no desire to curb.

By the time Tony met Pepper he’d refined these contracts to an art form, always handling them himself because if he was going to have a PA then he was damn well going to be _personal_ about it. Of course, he didn’t need it after Pepper, but if he ever picks up a new PA there will be new clauses about heroing and how that impacts the whole thing in there, as well as codes of conduct with regard to sensitive information.

* * *

Stark Industries is a company that Tony spent decades making fair. Even when it was a weapon company, the tagline was always that Stark Industries did it _right._ Prejudice clauses are in all contracts, and even people in higher positions in the company can lose them, or get demotions, if it comes out that they’re practicing prejudiced behavior in the workplace for _any_ reason. 

And by any reason, the language of the contracts make it clear that _any_ is the correct word. Gender, sex, religion, age, orientation, disability, ethnicity, personal hobbies. Even now that Pepper runs the company when Tony turns up a new thing that people are being assholes about, he brings it to the legal department and people have a new go around of contract negotiations at the end of the year.

It’s an annual thing, and also handles things like raises, renewals of health care, and otherwise makes sure that everything the employees need is up to date. He’s lost employees to this process because they refused to sign with the new clauses, but people are generally just happy to get a raise.

* * *

Tony, even when running around being a hero from time to time, makes sure to spend time with his R&D departments in the various countries of which SI has people. He may no longer run the company, but that has never meant that he’s uninvolved, and he likes to keep abreast of what his people are doing.

This also means if someone is having issues, he might get in the middle of it and fix it if he can.

* * *

It’s not unheard of that Tony’s paid off someone’s student loans as part of their hiring package.

* * *

Nearly everyone in SI has confidentially clauses of some kind or another they’ve had to sign. Especially the janitorial staff. Tony will never underestimate the menial workers in the company, knowing that if they’re unhappy, they can really fuck everyone over.

In fact, it’s a well-kept secret inside the company that the janitorial staff at times end up in R&D or other divisions when it’s shown they have aptitudes for it, even if they have no schooling.

* * *

Being an asshole is a great way to have Tony Stark visit your department ‘just to see how things are going’ just when you really don’t want him to.

* * *

Pepper Potts may be the CEO of the company, at Tony’s insistence, but he’s still got majority shares in the company and intends to keep it that way. When he dies, Pepper will inherit them, of course, but until then, she can always lean on him if someone is being an asshole to her because she’s a woman.

He knows she can handle it, but he still likes being around as backup.

* * *

After Obadiah’s betrayal, Tony went through every department in the company and personally reviewed every single employee file. More than half the members of the company were let go, in a staggered fashion, starting with most of Legal. After that, he hired fresh people from all over the world with a much, much stricter vetting process.

Unsurprisingly, R&D was the department that got off the most lightly. More surprisingly, the janitorial staff was nearly unscathed as well.

* * *

Everyone in Stark Industries at some point is taught how to handle explosions and evacuation procedures. This may take form by way of R&D, some ass trying to get back at Tony via his employees, or even the bizarreness that is someone setting off the security sensors because of their kid’s school project. 

It’s one of those things taken in stride after you’ve been with the company a few months.

* * *

While weapons were the byline of the company, Tony’s investment in things such as intellicrops had been steadily gaining momentum, leading to a third of all the company investments at that time going to humanitarian efforts and medical advancements of various kinds. Switching from weapons to technological equipment more in line with energy efforts, strangely, didn’t change this, and many people overlook the humanitarian side of Stark Industries even now.

* * *

Tony wrote the biography about his dad entirely to fund relief efforts in the countries affected by Ultron. He has seen no profit from the sales of that novel, nor will he, as that was not the point of writing it.

* * *

Every Stark Industries building that has R&D also has what is fondly known as the ‘pirate table’. Newer employees are often told the story of how back in Malibu R&D in 1998 a frustrated scientist had his personal snacks stolen from the lunch storage table one too many times and called everyone pirates. 

He then started the noble tradition of keeping carry out menus on said table, and the tradition has only grown since then, expanding out with breakdowns of allergens at different restaurants in the area, who kept kosher, who was vegan-friendly, things like that. There’s still a snack counter, but these days everyone knows you keep your treats there at your own risk.

* * *

R&D interviews are an interesting thing at SI. There is, of course, the typical paperwork thing, which is totally normal. Then there’s the less normal thing.

There’s the Box Test. The Box is a system by which the weak are weeded from the strong and the innovative from those just looking for a paycheck. At least, that’s how anyone in R&D looks at it.

It was an invention of Tony’s when he got sick of new hires just going in the same circles as what everyone _else_ was. So, one day in 1993, Tony came into R&D with a flat of boxes filled with odds and ends and told everyone that _no one_ got to leave without handing over _something_ built using items from their box. They could use anything in the lab to make it, so long as the parts were from out of the box. 

Three people quit on the spot, refusing to use things like rubber bands, spare metal scraps, and _pens_ to build _anything,_ but everyone else came through it, realizing that Tony wasn’t going to leave them to it _alone_ because he had his own damn box. It earned the respect and loyalty of the R&D department, and ever since, any newcomers had to pass the stress test of ‘show me something good’. Not everyone came up with anything innovative at all, some people defaulting to simple machines, but everyone who comes up with _something_ has a place in SI.

The record-holder after the initial test is Carlos Humera whose test took a week and a half, with his wife playing spotter by bringing him clothes and meals so that he didn’t have to leave grounds and thus conclude his ‘interview’. He’s now one of the leading innovators for humanitarian projects at SI.

* * *

In a complete reversal of how Tony won over the R&D, Tony’s PR was, rather than tortured, _won over._ He didn’t try to bribe them or anything like that. No, he just went up to the people who had been handling publicity for him just about forever and point blank told them what he wanted them to do with his image in 1991, before ever letting a single magazine talk to him.

Sure, he was a bit of a mess because this is his parents’ legacy he was staring in the eye, but it’s also what needed to happen. He didn’t pretend he was going to be perfect, nor that he wasn’t going to make their lives difficult. He was, however, honest, and kept them _informed,_ which was more than most people ever got when they’d have to do a mad scramble to make up for the gaffes of their employers. 

People who didn’t want to handle the challenge had long since been weeded out, but that respect for his honesty turned into loyalty as years went by and things rather went to hell for Tony. They also refused to relinquish him when he handed over the company to Pepper. Sure, he was no longer SI’s problem, technically, but he was _their_ Stark, and they were going to make sure his image didn’t fall apart because the guy had no backup.

* * *

Obadiah made a mess of everything when he tried to kill Tony, and nobody who is still in SI after The Purge of 2009 is liable to forget it. More than half of the Law office for the company was gutted and replaced, most of the manufacturing and shipping areas were heavily audited and evaluated, leaving a nearly complete turnover. Even the janitorial staff was hit, though far more lightly than most others. The only groups that mostly came out unscathed were R&D and PR, with the Board losing three members who had been entirely in Obadiah’s pocket and aware of the double-dealing. 

The rash of firings was the result of Tony personally going over everything, every employee file, every transaction and contract, to find out where things had gone wrong, when, and who was involved. He used the information to hunt down the weapons he could, to get rid of people bad for the company, and essentially did his level best to not hand Pepper a horrible mess in the company. 

By the time the purge was completed, he had realized that he wasn’t liable to survive the Palladium poisoning and was planning accordingly.

* * *

Tony doesn’t tend to hire people based on their qualifications. Yes, qualifications _help_ in many instances, but if he meets someone in a situation and decides they’re getting a chance, then _by god_ they’re getting a chance. Even if no one else would give said person a chance. Suffice to say he’s got a bit of a following from among _this_ group of employees, which are scattered across all the departments of SI.


	10. James Barnes and Sokovia Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The many bits and pieces I assembled around the time Civil War came out.

**Natasha Thoughts as relates to Siberia**

Okay, so in an earlier part of this, I shared a thought about Natasha that she knew as much about the Winter Soldier situation as Steve did.

Today I had another thought.

What if she _did_ tell Tony what she’d learned? Not that Steve was with her, but that Zola had implied Bucky had been the one to do his parents in?

What if Tony internalized the concept but didn’t really believe it and this is what led to Natasha and Tony being closer? What if Tony didn’t _really_ believe it because if it was more than a supposition, if it was _possible,_ then Steve would have said something?

What if that moment of restraint in Civil War was because he hoped that Steve hadn’t been with Natasha after all, and thus couldn’t have confirmed or denied anything? 

He was exhausted, emotionally betrayed on multiple levels, his best friend was hurt so there was an edge of sharp guilt to that, and he was clinging, through all this, to the concept that in spite of _everything_ Steve hadn’t lied to his face.

What if he just needed somewhere for all that grief and betrayal to go, and attacking Bucky, while at the forefront because he just watched a video of his mother die when he’d convinced himself that _couldn’t_ be true, was more about _Steve_ than the shock and immediate need for revenge?

After all, he’s more than happy to beat the stuffing out of Steve even if he puts a focus on knocking Bucky down and keeping him there, because yeah, Bucky _aims to kill_ and he’s not stupid enough to want that at his back. He wants him out of the way by the end of the fight so he can focus on Steve. Unfocused rage changing to more calculated, if panicked, intent. 

So, what if Natasha said something, and Steve didn’t. That’s kind of even worse, in Tony’s mind, than just _Steve_ failing to share. Because Natasha didn’t gain or lose anything by telling him, and he could never have known. Natasha who has in the past lied to him for his own good, essentially. Natasha who isn’t about honesty or forthright confessions, and yet, she was still more _honest_ with him than Steve.

What if that was part of all of it?

* * *

**What is Tony’s view on Bucky?**

If Bucky had not been standing right in front of Tony when the news hit, that scene would have been okay. He would have had time to process the situation, to breathe it out and to step back and look at it logically. He would have had a chance to stick the blame where it belongs, which is on HYDRA, or the Red Room, or whoever else it might have been that placed the hit on his parents and decided they deserved to die.

Tony is a guy who understands that weapons are not at fault for the destruction they cause. It is their wielders, their creators, who are at fault.

In the movie, he _tried._

But _Steve._

Steve kicked his wavering balance right over, and he just couldn’t do it. It doesn’t help _anything_ that I, personally, tend to believe Tony is that guy who had a fan crush on Bucky as a kid and admired him as the most impressive Commando.

He _wants_ to believe the best of this man. You see it in how _easily_ he caves to the implication that the worst isn’t true about Bucky. He doesn’t even doubt it the moment he’s given a chance to see the man as something more than the bad situation he’s been operating under. 

But _this._

This is in his face, and painful, and horrible, and the loss of the last adults that were his as a young man.

Added to that, there was the crumbling of lingering dreams and admiration where Bucky was concerned, with Steve stomping on them from the position of a friend who _clearly_ didn’t trust him… It’s a blow, too much of one for Tony to look at logically because everything just hurts.

It hurts especially because it’s not like Steve didn’t have a chance to tell Tony Bucky was innocent of what started this whole situation after they were brought in… and he didn’t tell him that either. Not that, and not this, and then he tried to lie to his face on top of it.

So basically, this was the culmination of a couple weeks of torment on someone who is still grieving over someone, probably several someones honestly, to say nothing of Tony being fully aware that it’s _Steve_ who was the cause of his best friend being in the shape he’s in now, even if he’s not the one who struck the blow.

And just…

It’s not even really about _Bucky,_ at the end there.

It’s just the most recent thing, the sharpest sensation on top of the broken glass that made up everything that’s happened, and it’s giving him a target to lash out at.

And at that moment, when he finally snaps, that target is probably all he can see.

So what does Tony think about Bucky?

Tony’s opinion hasn’t changed about _Bucky._ Steve, though. Steve is a whole other animal.

* * *

**James Buchanan Barnes and Law Enforcement.**

Upon talking to someone about Civil War, and how the whole UN meeting explosion thing would pertain to the timeline we’ve established, I realized some interesting points.

**They were already keeping an eye on Bucky.**

No, think about it. Sharon had not only the time, but the access to get the files and pass them along to Steve. Even if she was in a hurry, these were comprehensive enough paper files that they needed a folder. It wasn’t just a sheet of paper she wrote some recently discovered address or coordinates on, it was a proper file, with god knows what inside.

This does not say new surveillance.

This says old, ongoing surveillance where they _didn’t do anything to bring him in._

Why?

**Because They had no proof of Bucky having committed a crime.**

No, hold up and take a moment to work with me here. Why else would they wait for something as dramatic as the UN bombing to move? Courtesy?

No.

They had nothing concrete. In fact, I ask everyone to remember that line where Natasha talks about how he’s a ghost story in the intelligence community. About how _no one was sure he even existed._

That’s not proof of a crime. That’s not even proof of being in the country the crimes were committed in. 

**But what about Washington D.C?**

While for story purposes I like to play with the idea of him having been caught on film sometimes, I sincerely doubt that that is what happened.

Bucky was highly trained in avoiding cameras, in keeping his detection low and unseen whenever possible. He was made into someone that didn’t leave witnesses that could give concrete evidence of a damn thing, and even at his most obvious, his face was _usually hidden._

**But the Stark video says otherwise?**

I don’t actually think so. I think that was a singular instance rather than a trend. In fact, it might have been intentional.

Can you imagine how useful having something documented like that could be if Bucky acted up and needed to have a reminder of who exactly he was now? It was a prime opportunity and one that wasn’t liable to come up again. There is more than one source that indicates he’d slipped his leash before, so why not use something so emotionally crushing to use to bring him back in line?

With that video, his handlers could go ‘See, that was you. You did that.’ and what could he say about it? Nothing. It would be an excellent, if horrifying measure, to make him less likely to resist and cause hassle all around.

**Then why wasn’t it destroyed later?**

The same reason the book wasn’t. It was clear that they were intended to be handed down to someone else taking control of Bucky, and got lost in the power shuffle when Russia stopped being the ones in control of the Winter Soldier.

It was, simply put, a filing error, not a repeatable offense.

**Zemo could have turned the video in and gotten Bucky arrested that way.**

And it would have even probably worked, but it wouldn’t have done what Zemo wanted it to do. It wouldn’t have brought the Avengers to fight, and it wouldn’t have had anywhere near the same impact. Who knows though, maybe that was plan R, after everything else he wanted to try to get them dealt with failed.

We don’t know what the man was willing to take as an acceptable revenge at the end of the day, we only see what he actually ended up going with, because it was the first plan that worked. 

Ultimately, my point here is that, before that planted video, which placed Bucky at the scene of the UN bombing, they had nothing.

They just had speculation.

* * *

**The Sokovia Accords and Tony**

Okay, you lot, I’ve seen a lot of posts, a lot of opinions, and I get it, everyone has things they loved or hated about the movie, and that’s awesome. Everyone has their biases about how the characters should have acted, or did, and feel strongly about said biases.

But I would like to remind people about a few things that they seem to have forgotten about Tony Stark.

Tony Stark is someone who has never been willing to submit to a higher authority of his own _if he was aware of it._ Him bowing to the Accords does not mean that he feels they are something he would not go against for a cause he felt up to the task. In the movie, he very clearly sneaks around them to _help his friend_ even if that goes kind of shitty. He did not do this flagrantly, and he knows that if he got caught he would face consequences. _He’s willing to accept them_. He’s, of course, going to avoid getting in trouble, but do you really think if he got caught he would fight his punishment? Probably not.

Tony Stark is not a politician. _Tony Stark is not a politician. TONY STARK IS NOT A POLITICIAN._ I know somehow you guys have missed this, all of you who seemed to think that his lack of surprise meant that somehow he wrote the god damn Accords his own self, but seriously people. His first words to Steve were that if they accepted it, they could go back and fight it, get it revised. If he was an active participant in the writing of them, guess what. He _probably_ would have stalled the writing of them long enough to get Steve and the others on board to help him. But no, that didn’t happen, because they probably didn’t tell him before they wrote the things, because _guess what?_ Tony Stark is one of the people they’re bringing under the legislature. You tell me how often political persons in charge bring the minorities they’re persecuting to the table when they’re writing about them.

The answer you’re looking for is ‘pretty much never’. And in the culture of the MCU, Superheroes are a minority people. Metahumans are deemed as ‘other’ and this is not unimportant. _It’s actually very important._

And then, after that people move on to ‘well Tony wasn’t surprised about the Accords!’ and you know what I say to that? Tony is nosy. Tony probably knew something was up and not _what_ for a while before he finally managed to get word on someone to talk to about events. He knew something was coming, after Ultron he probably _always_ knew something was coming. He wrote a book about his dad and published it to raise funds to make up for the Ultron fiasco. He covered for Bruce and handled the media for the team to keep the world focused on him and not his teammates. These are canon. These are shown in news clips in the extras of other movies. So no, Tony wasn’t surprised.

But you know what also is true? Tony read up on an entire field of study overnight in the Avengers. Do you think he couldn’t read _one_ manuscript, one framed as a legislature based contract? When he was the CEO of a company once upon a time? So yes, he understood it, yes he probably had a day or two more warning to read the thing, but no, that’s all he got. That’s all the movie implies. That’s it.

So seriously people, stop bleeding whatever version of Tony you think you’re seeing all over MCU Tony. He’s not a political mastermind that fucked over the Avengers. He’s a man with problems and guilt that happened to agree with over a hundred countries when they slapped him with a document that demanded he take responsibility for things he already felt he’d done wrong. 

I can see Steve’s position, why he didn’t agree, and honestly, I think Tony can too. I think he _gets it_ even if he doesn’t think it’s the smart choice. He’s losing people who can help him rally and make this document something less terrible every time someone refuses to sign. So sure, Steve had a point, in how it was not okay to control them, and as other parts of the MCU world canon show, such as in Agents of SHIELD, basically register metahumans, but Tony was seeing how it could be worse. He was seeing what ended up happening. 

He was, ultimately, left in a position with no power for change, no support to make it happen, and a document he didn’t fully agree with but saw as less terrible than what could be. Tony was fighting for a place to work from, and that didn’t work out for him, but that doesn’t mean he was the villainous mastermind behind the Accords, and I’ll thank you all to stop saying he was.

* * *

**The Sokovia Accords and You**

Okay, so the other day my husband was watching the Slingshot miniseries and it touches on registering someone from SHIELD for the Accords. Because of this, I remembered seeing a theory someone had that the series set related to the MCU respect the movies but the reverse isn’t true because of how the Accords are shown to be handled in the various runs.

I can tell you right now, after a short bit of discussion to clear it up in my head, that that is not accurate. Yes, people can have the movies without the various series’ and be perfectly happy and have a complete experience, however, that doesn’t mean that the various series’ actually contradict anything in the movies.

Now, to explain the Accords and why they are, and _aren’t,_ being applied in the various places. 

In the Movies, the Accords are put to the Avengers, point blank, no confusion. In SHIELD, they’re shown to be put forward to SHIELDies and similar as something to use, and it’s mentioned that people in other parts of the world will be subject to them too. You never see any of the Defenders crew, however, approached about it.

There’s a reason for this.

The Avengers cross country borders as a matter of course. From the first time Tony took his suit back over to the middle east and went after wrecking his weapons, or when Bruce fled the United States, this has been true. SHIELD was _built_ on the notion of international cooperation and stayed that way as well. I find it very likely that anyone else being chased for registration has a similar international capacity.

Now, people will argue that Danny Rand is international too, in his pursuit of the Hand! Well, yeah, but nobody knows that. Most of the world just thinks he’s a rich guy with delusions of altruism. If the government caught wind of him doing vigilante work outside the United States, they’d probably get on his ass too.

As for people like Daredevil, who have indisputably stayed within the country borders, they’re something different. Luke was in jail for things that happened, but he wasn’t registered. He never went to the Raft or any similar superhuman facility. The Vulture ended up in jail, not in a place for supervillains too. 

They were local.

These people have no need for international oversight because _they are not international._ The Accords don’t apply to these people, and thus the punishments _of_ said Accords, because they’re citizens within a country, acting within the laws (or outside of them as the case may be) of only one country. The people endangered and saved are all citizens on the land of one country.

There’s no point in trying to register all your local vigilantes and superheroes. Get them to work with the law enforcement and get the help of people who _are_ registered, yes, that is highly encouraged, but just registering someone because they’re exceptional?

No.

That isn’t what’s happening here. 

What’s happening is a form of licensing and oversight for doing international work. Sort of like signing into a government agency and getting a Passport at the same time. You wouldn’t go to another country without one and expect it to work out in your favor, right?

Same thing, just on a slightly stricter, and more crime proactive, scale.

If that involves anyone involved _already_ with a government agency being registered with a more _local_ register before being sent along to the Accords, well. Police officers have records too, and it’s meant in a similar vein. 

I’m not saying the Accords are perfect, by any means, but I _am_ saying that, in the context of the world, both the various series _and_ the movies, that they are consistent and make sense.


	11. Tony Lists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have a few point by point lists stashed away for Tony's skills, habits, and... kidnappings, and those will go here.

**The Cufflink Collection**

Tony is the kind of guy who when he does something, he _does_ something. His cufflink collection is no exception to this, and you can actually tell his moods (assuming he’s been wearing button-up shirts recently that is) by the character of the cufflinks he’s been wearing lately. Mind, repeat cufflinks are unlikely unless he’s been really stuck on an emotion, but a repeat type, definitely.

He has some he’s made himself, simpler ones that he’s disassembled and added little bits of tech to that he can use for other means, but then there are old favorites he’s never tampered with. Of course, there are always cufflinks he wears on a theme, like his small variety of Iron Man themed things he wears when he wants to give a subtle reminder, but then there are the many that he wears on a mood basis.

Like the pair of golden cufflinks that when he was a teenager had white gardenias as their face. The paint had worn away from the wide face first, and now only the dark of the gold remained, the pattern nearly entirely gone from years of running his fingers over the face of them. They were the last gift he’d been given by Ana Jarvis before she died, and he often wears them when he’s exceptionally happy. 

In a more general way though…

**Unrepentantly Happy:** Gifts from people he cares or cared about, the handful of geeky ones like his enterprise cufflinks.

**Stressed out:** Usually these are cufflinks with mild or nonexistent adornment, showing either smooth stone or metal and something he can rub his fingers across repeatedly without hurting his fingertips.

**Tired or Jittery:** Textured decoration, usually something with some kind of picture that he can trace and keep his attention on in the process. 

**Confident or Quietly Happy:** Usually, this is when he whips out the ones he’s unlikely to fuss with at all, the ones that are interesting to look at but not really all that fun to play with.

**Guilty:** This is when he whips out the ones that are sharp, or have pokey bits to them that he can press his fingertips against to keep himself grounded in the moment. He also tends to wear some of the ones that Obadiah gave him when he’s feeling like this.

**Creative:** This leads to the wearing of his smallest, most functional of his collection, the ones that look nice but are easy to ignore. 

**Angry or Just Plain Grumpy:** Sparkles. The ones with gemstones always come out when he’s angry, glittery and pretty and liable to draw the eye to his hands when he’s talking.

**Depressed:** Often this will lead to him putting the cufflinks in but not actually doing up his cuffs, or even noting which ones he had in if he remembers to wear any at all. Usually, it’s not obvious because this often leads to t-shirt under suit jacket days instead.

There are others as well, of course, but these aren’t all the time, and don’t account for sudden mood changes. They only account for ‘I woke up in this mood’ moods. Of course, sometimes he just feels like wearing a specific pair of cufflinks because he wants to, so there is no set system for all the time.

* * *

**Alcohol? That’s totally alcohol!**

So after 2010 and the disaster of a birthday party when he got drunk, Tony finally put away the liquor. In fact, the only time any is even in his space is when he brings it in specifically for parties.

That doesn’t mean he got rid of the bottles. In fact, they were lovingly cleaned, then he picked up a new hobby. Figuring out how to make juices and other assorted non-alcoholic drinks look like what should be in those bottles.

Please note he’s made all juices as _clear as possible_ via straining and such as needed. He has the habit of keeping his ‘alcohol’ stored cold as well.

**Scotch**

  * Glenlivet: Black Tea.
  * Aberlour: Pu Erh Tea. 
  * He uses other teas that are a variation of these two to get the shade he needs of color.

**Vodka**

  * Coconut Water for all of them, though with different flavors that match what’s on the bottle for the flavored ones.

**Champagne**

  * Different ratios of red and white sparkling grape juice for each type.

**Kahlua**

  * Really good coffee.

**Rum**

  * Light: Aloe Vera Juice.
  * Dark: Blueberry Juice.

**Midori**

  * Honeydew Juice.

**Whiskey**

  * He uses apple ciders made from specific different types of apples that correspond to the shade of Whiskey he’s replacing.

**Tequila**

  * Silver: White Cranberry Juice.
  * Gold: Peach Juice.

**Gin**

  * Lemongrass juice.

**Wine**

  * Red: Raspberry or Cherry juice (it depends how dark it is supposed to be)
  * White: White Grape Juice.
  * Blush: Combinations of the above as needed.

**Amaretto**

  * Dragonfruit juice with Starfruit Juice to tint as needed.

**Irish Cream**

  * Chocolate Coconut Milk.

**Bourbon**

  * Tamarind and Plum Juices in different ratios.

**Vermouth**

  * Rosato: Pomegranate Juice.
  * Bianco: Lychee Juice.
  * Doro: Pear juice.
  * Rosso: Blackberry Apple juice.
  * Extra Dry: White Tea.

**Absinthe**

  * Green: Kiwi Juice with Sugarcane juice added for the lighter variations.
  * Red variation: Cranberry juice.



* * *

**Headcanon Time**

To Start, Tony’s list of triggers that cause him issues and where he got them:

**People Taking His Stuff**

  * When he was a kid, older kids liked to take his things and claim credit.
  * Often, the older kid would be believed if it was something not technology related.
  * As he got older, instances of this situation just got _worse._ It led to being extremely protective of what he deems his own.
  * People taking his things and misusing them just turned it into a type of fanaticism he’s not even sorry for.
  * Afghanistan more or less ensured he’d never get over it.

**Being Handed Things ******

****
  * Started at ten by bullying kids offering him things and snatching them back.
  * Intensified at the party when he was sixteen with the drugged drink.
  * Turned into a proper phobia around 22 when someone slipped him a hallucinogen on some papers.
  * Cemented at 25 as a ‘quirk’ after being handed ‘aspirin’ that turned out to be something a hell of a lot stronger. This event had no ill intent, but still put Tony off taking anything from people he didn’t know well.
****
******Handshakes**

  * Tony’s had people slip everything from phone numbers to death threats to him this way.
  * The phobia about them really hit after 24, and he’s still suspicious that this is the way he was grabbed that year.

**Hospitals**

  * Any time he’s been hurt enough to go to a hospital, he’s somehow ended up with something going wrong. Reporters, being left alone, the wrong drugs.
  * When he was nine he broke his arm and they had to recast it because the first doctor made a mistake when fixing it.
  * When he was thirteen he was given a set of drugs that had a poor reaction that nearly killed him. 
  * When he was twenty someone tried to prescribe him for medication he didn’t need nor want.
  * After Afghanistan, the aversion turned from an aversion and low burn suspicion into a full-blown phobia.

**Water**

  * Waterboarding in Afghanistan. 
  * When somewhat recovered, was fully revived when his house fell on him in Malibu years later.

**Sand**

  * Again, Afghanistan.
  * The caves constantly had sand blowing in, getting into his clothes and making the air dusty.
  * The jaunt through the desert where he was sure he was going to die.

**People Touching The Reactor**

  * Obadiah. The Fucker.

**Suffocation**

  * When he makes jokes about people wanting to throttle him, they’re not usually jokes.
  * He’s had people try to smother him off and on since high school when he wouldn’t stop talking.
  * His time in Afghanistan turned it into a phobia.
  * New York turned it into a paranoia.
  * Malibu made it so that the very idea of being without enough air will make him have a panic attack.

**Stars**

  * He’s fine, usually, but after New York if he stares up into the stars, they freak him out.
  * Like, really freak him out. It pisses him off something terrible.

**Small Dark Spaces**

  * Started at 24 by whatever happened he can’t remember, he took to an open remodel of his Malibu home to counter it.
  * Afghanistan reset the recovery of that particular issue to Zero.
  * Malibu made him unable to handle being in any kind of confined space he doesn’t know he can get out of.

**Foreign Languages**

  * He’s fine if he _understands_ the language.
  * Afghanistan made many middle-eastern languages a no-go that make him twitch when he hears them.
  * Anything that isn’t English, Italian, German, or Hungarian being shouted at him will always make him flinch, even if he does understand it.

****

********

* * *

Kidnappings minor, major, and almost the one time that needed to count.

**Seven**

  * The kidnappers were attempting to bribe Howard.
  * He was recovered quietly after three days by Peggy.
  * He was physically entirely fine.
  * He doesn’t really remember this at all.

**Twelve**

  * This was the kidnapping that led to boarding school.
  * He was grabbed between home and school.
  * He was only gone for a day, and managed to run away on his own.

**Sixteen**

  * During college his drink was spiked.
  * Rhodey intercepted the group as they were about to haul Tony into a car.
  * They regretted it.

**Twenty-Four**

  * Tony was in Europe at a party.
  * No one realized anything was wrong for three days.
  * It was another week and a half before he was tracked down.
  * He can’t remember most of it.
  * He found himself unable to handle the smell of lemon for months after.
  * He’s still not sure how he got away, just that he knows he did.

**Thirty-Eight**

Afghanistan. Obadiah is a fucking asshole. So many issues. Worst kidnapping he ever had. Rhodey brought him home.
**Forty-Two**

Mandarin Situation. Aldrich Killian, also an asshole. Rhodey and Pepper to the Rescue!


* * *

Tony’s Degrees, when and sometimes why.

**Doctorate of Engineering**

MIT He insisted on a Doctorate so he’d have the right to make people call him ‘Dr. Stark’ when it suited him. He jumped through the extra hoops to make it happen.
**Master of Computer Science and Robotics**

MIT
**MBA**

MIT
**Performance Arts, BA**

Age 22 after failing to close a deal because he didn’t know how to say what he wanted to say.
**Master of Biomechanical Engineering**

Age 25 after the field opened up and he realized he kind of seriously needed to know this. MIT was happy to have him back
. **Pirate Certification**

Age 30 after he first heard of the practice. MIT.


Please keep in mind that Tony only _bothered_ to get a degree in these things because it suited him. He definitely knows about more fields than the above list implies, and is always learning more.

* * *

Languages Tony knows, how much he knows of them, and when he learned them!

**English**

Reads, Writes, and Speaks fluently. Childhood language.
**Italian**

  * Reads, Writes, and Speaks fluently.
  * Childhood language via his mother.
  * A bit rusty from disuse.

**German**

  * Speaks and Reads fluently.
  * Childhood language via his father.

**Hungarian**

  * Speaks fluently.
  * Childhood language via the Jarvises.
  * Very rusty.

**French**

  * Reads, Writes, and Speaks fluently.
  * Learned in high school.

**Spanish**

  * Reads, Writes, and Speaks fluently.
  * Learned at 20 after misunderstanding someone thinking that Italian and French would carry him in the conversation.
  * She slapped him _really_ hard for the miscommunication.

**Russian**

  * Reads and Speaks fluently, has never had cause to write it.
  * Learned after being thoroughly humiliated by a Russian girl when he was 22 because he couldn’t understand her.

**Japanese**

  * Speaks fluently.
  * Learned for business purposes when he was 23.

**Mandarin**

  * Understands.
  * Picked up enough to not be left unaware when people spoke it around him at 30.

**Dari**

  * Can speak it fluently, can understand most writing in it.
  * Learned at age 32 after the whole 9/11 thing and the first hints he might end up visiting Afghanistan in the future.

**ASL**

  * Fluent, but better at reading than speaking. Sometimes absently throws a sign from it into his hand movements when expounding a point to someone out loud.
  * Learned this at sixteen when he made friends with a deaf woman also into robotics at MIT.




	12. The Burger Joint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's Burger Place in New York which he claims is the best in the world.

**The Burger Joint**

More than one person has run into Tony’s Burger Joint. It likes to appear in RP stuff because it’s Tony’s absolute most favorite place to get burgers and he likes to give them the business by telling new people about it.

Facts about The Burger Joint:

**The Location**

  * It’s in Hell’s Kitchen, on the southmost part of the neighborhood where it borders Chelsea.

**The Menu**

  * Burgers (Obviously) that come in a few different ways. They are conscious that not everyone does beef and actually sell both turkey and veggie burgers too.
  * Curly fries, Onion Rings, Sweet Potato Fries, and Normal Fries are all options.
  * Floats. They have about 20 kinds of soda by a local vendor that likes to make all kinds of different flavors. Every time they get a new one, they put it on the list. Tony has had them all. They make their own ice cream and they have a banana sorbet that you can get instead of vanilla ice cream if you can’t do milk.
  * They make awesome Sundaes from a customizable ingredient list.

**The Staff**

**The Chefs**

**The Lady**
    About sixty years old, cranky, and incredibly unimpressed with Tony, this woman is the one who is around in the mornings, and will, without so much as hesitating to ask if you want it, stick an egg on your plate to ‘make it healthy’.
**Charlie**
    This guy is the one who rules the graveyard shift and is always the one around when the bars let out during the week. He’s friendly, and will come out to check on the customers from time to time. He has an… interesting hangover drink that involves pickles you can ask him for.
**Masterchef**
    This man is the guy who rules the afternoon shift and you’ll never see him without a chefs hat. Not ever. He’s a little stern, and Tony has always suspected he’s a little Russian, but if he has an accent, you’ll never know. He’s not much of a talker.
**Clarice**
    This girl is the youngest of the cooks, and picked it up straight out of culinary school about five years previous. She’s the owner’s daughter, and her mom lets her have free reign on side dishes and dessert options as long as she doesn’t mess with what works. She’s around on the weekends and covers the shifts the other chefs don’t for their days off.

**The Waitstaff**

**Johnny**

  * This man’s sister finally talked her ladylove around to marriage, and after much disaster, and a lot of almost cold feet, got the woman to carry through. It’s his favorite topic, and if you get him to linger at your table too long he’ll go all ‘proud big brother’ and show you pictures that his sister took while they were on their honeymoon. And how the women, now that they’ve finally carried through, are looking at adoption.
  * He’s usually around during the morning shift into lunch.

**Anna**

  * The newest and youngest on staff, this teenager is only around on the weekends, but she’s also the one most likely to suggest things, be it to the customers or to her fellow employees. 
  * It should be noted that her hair is bubblegum pink and she doesn’t understand the concept of a uniform whatsoever.

**Georgie**

  * This woman is Tony’s favorite waitress and will take one look at him before turning around to go place his order, complete with a random float of her choice. She never bothers to come to the table without food or a drink unless the man brought company. She knows her regulars, and she knows what they like, hands down.
  * Her shift is the evenings.

**Douglas**

  * Cranky, uncommunicative, and overall the most attentive member of the wait staff the place has, this man often greets customers simply by saying one word at a time. These include ‘Ready?’ ‘Drinks?’ ‘Order?’ ‘Dessert?’ and ‘Check?’ and not much else. If he’s feeling chatty he might throw a hello or goodbye at you though.
  * He’s the graveyard shift’s main waiter.

**Carla**

  * This woman is bright, bubbly, and has a love of cookies that will rival anyone’s. She’s also a chatter, and while she’ll take your order, she’ll ask about your day, how your kids are doing, and if that coworker of yours got the raise they were after.
  * Carla covers any shift that needs her, and can be seen just about any time of the day. 
  * She also sometimes brings in friends to fill the gaps, so most of the temporary staff were people she brought in for busy times.



**The Owner**

**Judith**

  * Tony has seen her all of four times.
  * One of these times was when she informed him of his reinforced patch of floor where he was expected to leave his suit going forward from that day.
  * Another of these times was to bitch out someone who was harassing her daughter.
  * She’s a widow.
  * She’s unimpressed with all you people, and is very much a native New Yorker.

**The Decor**

  * There aren’t many windows, but the ones there are view the street.
  * Said street is kind of sad and small and the place right across the street has a severely lopsided sign that no longer lights up.
  * It’s the bottom floor of a building with apartments over the top of it.
  * It’s a little run down.
  * The walls are shades of cream.
  * The booths and chairs are all upholstered with electric blue. 
  * The tables are all black.
  * The chair backs and table edges are all silver.
  * The floor is a black and red checkerboard patterns.
  * There is a vintage style counter people can sit at that’s edged in silver with a black surface.



This is The Burger Joint, which I have never yet named, but that Tony touts as being the _BEST_ Burger place in the US so far as he’s found it. He doesn’t keep it a secret, but he likes it there because the staff knows him, likes him, and keeps the assholes at bay.

Also, their food is fabulous and he loves that they like to give him mystery treats when Clarice has been feeling creative again.


	13. Space AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's Space Empire.

**All in the Stars**

It had been generations since humanity had taken to space. Out there, the colonization had spanned several worlds, finally bringing them into contact with other races, and humans, as anyone who has ever observed them, have the habit of being rather friendly with other species.

It didn’t always go well, but those who looked more human often ended up with results, and those results were children who had quirks. Sometimes those quirks had nothing to do with either parent race. Sometimes they had everything to do with them.

Tony’s grandfather had been one of these, the first in the family to go from simply being smart and knowing how to talk to a machine, to being the first to really be able to _talk_ to a machine. The Starks had always been a family of tinkerers, it had been what had gotten the family onto the first star-ward bound colony ships, once upon a time, but the new ability had taken that small skill and turned it into something bigger.

It had given Tony a wealth of possibility, spread across multiple planets and races, wealth and responsibility that had been handed down to him when his father died. It had been an accident, from what anyone could tell, and that was the worst part of it because Tony hadn’t exactly been _old._

No, he’d still been a damn teenager, barely old enough to take the reigns of a company that spanned planets. In more than one instance, the company had become the source of stability for entire segments of the population on a smaller planet or moon. It had been terrifying, having so much power, and he’d put all his trust into the wrong people. 

That had been a mistake that he’d ended up paying for dearly.

He’d learned his lessons, and after that the power rested solely in his own hands as well as those of the AIs that he created, be they for ships, private households, or anything else people could think of. Of course, he never sent them anywhere they didn’t want to go, because they were sentient, even if that was a secret, and he suspected more than one race, humans among them, wouldn’t be okay with that. So he was careful, but that part of the business was slowly growing, leaving him more and more busy as time went on.

The exhaustion from trying to keep that secret and carry all the work of it alone is what led to him finally creating the nanites he’d fed into himself to be able to directly interface and interact with his machinery at the basest level. He’d needed a little modification, in need of an energy source that wasn’t his nervous system, which of course led to a damn glow in his chest, but he’d take that over what he’d been living before. Of course, he nearly died in the process.

Humans were not biologically capable of handling direct mental contact with machines as advanced as a ship. No, at best they could typically handle simple data storage usually without dying of an aneurysm or stroke, unlike some races which could weather being more machine than human, always without a hitch. In fact, personal modification to these ends had long since been removed from viable research on most of the human held planets, though not outlawed given that there had never been a _need_ when it was so proven to be fruitless.

Of course, that hadn’t stopped experimentation during the wars, but nothing, so far as anyone had to show, had come of that.

In the end, however, it was the non-human part of Tony that had allowed him to take such a desperate step without dying. It let him breathe easier and think more clearly about what was before him as he idled at other tasks with whatever machine needed his attention.

* * *

Essentially the frame of this AU is space, and being in space. Tony has essentially created pretty forbidden tech and used it on himself because of Reasons, and this allows him to interact with machines of all levels through electrical tuning, and to understand them as sentient beings in their own rights. Sometimes incredibly stupid ones, but still self-aware.

One system even landed him with this clunky title: Anthony Edward Stark of the Wayfarer Starks, Empirical ruler of the outer colonies of Tharnet.

He’s a tinker and a mechanic, and he travels quite a bit. Of course, he also has enemies, so it would not be difficult to run into him in any number of ways. 

This is set in the far future from the current MCU so it’s entirely possible that that is ancient history to this particular AU.


	14. Avengers Academy AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the AU wherein the MCU turns into Avengers Academy in one of those other options.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm exceptionally proud of this because I made this particular AU before Infinity War came out.

**The Academy**

It all starts in the MCU. Really, in the MCU! It just doesn’t stay there. Instead, things happen, _misunderstandings_ happen, and things take the Avengers apart. Years later, different, but no less important things put them together again in a wild declaration of unity against a superior enemy.

They lose. 

The loss isn’t one small loss either. The loss is traumatically, horrifically terrible.

They lose their world. They lose their universe. They lose their _timeline._

It’s brutal, and the last few standing, in the end, are Tony Stark, Loki, and Nick Fury.

And the enemy, of course. 

It’s not acceptable. 

It’s three against one, and it’s _horrifying_ because there’s nothing left. There’s _no one left_. No one to fight for, only a _concept_ to fight against, something which isn’t _done._ Worse, something which is hungry and mindless, and so much worse than any sentient enemy ever was, having been let in by someone they’d managed to bring down _only just_ when they’d had so many more on their side in this fight. 

It’s Loki who figures out that the rampage won’t stop at their universe, at their Earth, that it’s moved from another timeline before and will keep going, destroying in its wake. It’s Loki who comes up with their _plan._

It was a ridiculous plan, honestly, which only worked as much as it did because Tony had managed to get the infinity gems into his possession when Thanos fell, earning himself the horrible battle scar of them being _welded_ into his skin because he’d refused to let go of them even when they’d started to eat away at him. That they hadn’t simply destroyed him was something that Fury put down to pure stubborn, really, because things hadn’t gone _near_ so well for a few others who had _tried_ during the fight with Thanos, the fight before the Ender. 

But that ridiculous plan? It was a painfully simple one. They’d just write the Ender out of existence, would reassemble everything into a better image, and everything would be fine.

It was a noble goal, really, but the Ender was greater than the stones. The Ender had eaten the stones in other universes, and they weren’t the first to _try_ such a thing. Still, there was that _stubborn_ factor, and between Fury manning the details, Tony providing the stubborn, and Loki directing the _shape_ of the magic, they forced the Ender far enough away to _escape._

Sort of.

They weren’t the only ones in such a position, after all. Another group, from another reality, had a similar idea and the two broken and bleeding timestreams perhaps ended up touching a bit too aggressively in passing. Their efforts to rebuild their own threads of reality came too close and turned into an anchoring lodestone as they twisted together, dragging in more fragments. 

Fury did his best to control the chaos as other people ended up caught up in the whirlpool their little round of creation had become, and he was the one who finally seized on the fact that he was the only common factor, the only one who apparently was ridiculous enough to bridge between the first few fragmented realities attracted to theirs. 

So he grabbed onto that and he twisted, trying option after option until he landed on one that stuck. By then Tony had long since exhausted everything just _holding on,_ and Loki was no better, even as more hands came on deck to help. Even another mage hadn’t been enough, not really. 

Fury was the only one not directly burning power, but instead was _fortifying_ himself as other versions of who he’d been slipped past, lending him their strength and experience as he secured his people, all those who were now in his care even if they hadn’t started there.

That was the clue. 

Memories were what was keeping everything from settling the right way, were leaving sharp shards of discordant notes that kept kicking everyone back into the vortex of power draining horror rather than settling in the new reality they were trying to craft so they could recover. Still, they couldn’t risk losing the memories either, not when the skills they had might be _needed._

So everything was distilled, made soft, and new friendships forged in the seemingly endless loop of being kicked out of reality repeatedly were kept even as old ties and memories were walled off, to be remembered when they were needed, added _when they were needed._ If that process came with a certain amount of making everyone younger, then that was something of a bonus. If it came with the downside that maturity levels would match apparent ages… then that was why Fury still had his accumulated memories and kept a little removed from the fray. Someone had to guard the edges of their new reality when the person holding the reigns didn’t remember anymore, and that someone might as well be him. 

Fury suspected that the Pepper that ended up in the party might remember more than she let on too, but that was fine. In fact, it was a relief to the only man who intended to properly remember from his group. She could keep an eye on Tony, regardless of what his memories were doing at the moment. She was _good_ at it. And the Pym… He was just a madman, so Fury would work around him and hope that he didn’t get them kicked back out of their new reality. Again. 

So it was unstable, and new arrivals kept _happening,_ but Tony had his gems, forgotten about in his right hand even while being ever present to anchor their new reality around them. It was enough, and while it might not have been _home,_ the new reality was _hope._

And that was the beginning of the Academy. The Avengers Academy.

* * *

**Academy Details**

Tony’s right hand is always covered because regardless of what he’s got on, he’s always got a thin metal film hiding his hand from himself, which actively _hurts_ when left exposed. He simply doesn’t think about it because of this and keeps it further gauntleted so it doesn't do that. The thin metal was actually the result of acquiring the Infinity Stones and is what he did to contain their power enough it wouldn’t burn out his everything.

* * *

Tony is more than a little wary about talking to Pym because he feels like every time he does it makes his head hurt. Way to keep poking the latent memories there Pym.

* * *

Any time any new character enters the radius of Tony’s universe bubble, regardless of origin, their memories and method of arrival takes a sharp 90 degree turn into something that won’t destabilize the entire Academy in the process. Suffice to say, this has led to some weird results. These days it means people arriving in pods.

* * *

Why yes, alternates happen. All the time. Bucky and the Winter Soldier. Steve and Dino-Steve. About 30 different Peter Parkers. Groot, teen, and Baby Groot.

Nobody even finds it weird. It just is. Okay, so they find it a little weird, but everyone copes rather well.

* * *

Pepper is amazing and Tony admires her forever, but he can never put his finger on why something about her seems a little _off._ The idea that she might not be the Pepper he started with never once crossed his mind.

* * *

Janet took her friendship with her original Tony and vigorously applied it to _this_ Tony when they met in the space between worlds. He was _thrilled_ and by the time they ended up in the Academy they were real friends on its own merits.

* * *

Tony’s obsession with giving everyone a suit is totally a side effect from his low key serious paranoia that the universe is about to be under attack again, eventually. Oddly enough, the constant incursions of enemies tend to settle this paranoia to a degree and he doesn’t mind when they happen. He just sees it as an opportunity.

* * *

The tendency of villains to be dragged into the Academy is blamed entirely on Tony’s desire for people to just get the fuck along already damn it. It doesn’t work on everyone, but it works on a shocking number of people.

* * *

Tony does his best to spoil everyone. He can’t help it. His name is on practically everything in the Academy and people _let him._ So, spoiling away!

* * *

Tony will one hundred percent flirt with everyone. Tony will also a hundred percent date anyone. He’ll also spend time with anyone in the Academy who wants his attention. None of this means he’s into you personally, of course (Enchantress he’s looking at you here) but he’ll still go along with it because he likes to see his friends happy.

* * *

He’s got his arc in round form and it’s actually rather comfortable and not at _all_ weird or there because his life is in danger as far as Tony’s concerned. It’s just _cool._ He never thinks too hard about how he got it though.

* * *

Tony’s water and space phobias are pretty much gone. In fact, a _lot_ of his personal hangups seem to have more or less evaporated. We’ll just blame that on having bigger things to worry about.


	15. The Basic AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is as close as I can really bring myself to go for a 'modern AU' where Tony is concerned. No superheroes, just... this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are mentions of car accidents in this one.

**In which Tony is slightly less rich.**

The thing about being Tony Stark is that Tony will always be smart. He’ll always be the kind of guy who likes to work with his hands.

It just happens in a world where the super soldier sort of situation just didn’t _exist_ that Tony grew up with parents that were a little less focused on trying to meet that kind of standard. It meant that Howard was around a little more, taught Tony a bit more about how to build and a little less about business, and that his mom kept him home a little longer.

They were still a well-off family, it was true, but there was a bit less oomph to it, a little less that screamed ‘I’m into things that will fuck over your life’ and a little more just being successful. His parents were younger when they had him, and that helped too. Sort of. It meant that they had a little more energy to deal with the wild child he was due to boredom.

It all resulted in him going to schools closer to home, mostly, and him heading to college at 16 instead of 15, with much more frequent voyages back to see the parents. He was nineteen when he graduated, needing less to prove himself at breakneck speed and more taking the time to actually soak in the college atmosphere. 

By the time he was twenty-two, he’d set up his garage, using the money his parents gave him to do it and not too proud to admit that it might have fallen on its face without that. Getting customers for a new business, he’d quickly found, was actually tricky.

He looked into other things too, of course, he knew he had a windfall of epic proportions coming his way eventually, but he wanted to live his life _this_ way, working with his hands, taking care of peoples’ cars and tinkering with interesting projects like AI tech. He was twenty-six by the time JARVIS, a much smaller, but no less amazing for it, project was realized, confined to his home computer network at first until he sorted out all the bits and bobs that would let the program have something a little more free-will.

He kept it a secret though, on the down low with his other tinker projects, because frankly, he wasn’t sure the world would be cool with something like that, rich parents or not. He never mentioned he came from money to people, and honestly, he _liked_ it that way. People never tried to get close to him for his parents’ money like they had when he was a kid, and his reputation was entirely his own in business circles. He had staff who worked at his garage when he was busy, and who were continually amazed by the things he came up with and showed off that he never tried to sell to a market.

No matter the advice he sometimes got about that.

And then came the car accident, just shy of his thirtieth birthday. The worst part was that he wasn’t even in a car. He was walking to work, the same path that he’d used since he’d bought the two properties. One his nice house, and the other several blocks away being his nice garage. The driver hadn’t seen him, and he’d been hit hard enough by the truck that the next thing he remembered was the doctors telling him that his motor functions and muscle strength in his chest and arms would never be good enough for him to get back to work.

Tony, of course, had told them fuck you very much, used some of the money his parents continually set aside from him even as they, in their old age, had run off to warmer climes, and found the best physio clinic he could locate and went _there._

He made friends, met _amazing_ people who were worse off than him, missing limbs, paralyzed, horrible things, and used that to remind himself that it could have been worse. It took nearly three years for him to do more than oversee in his shop again, but he was incredibly proud of the day he could finally fix a car on his own again.

From there, well, Tony just started to pay a bit more attention and maybe never walked to work again. His motorcycle had never seen so much use as it had after he was finally back home to stay. 

And if he maybe started to market some of his trinkets after that, well, fair was fair. He wasn’t going to _die_ and not share them with the damn world. That was just stupid.


	16. Sense8 AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based off the Netflix Sense8 show. Loosely. The concept was from there but the execution is... a little different.

**Easily in Touch**

So over the last week, I’ve been marathoning all of Sense8. I have to say, I love the premise, and the way it was handled in that show, and I look forward to the finale. All of that said, the show inspired this AU which I’m going to say now _will not be exactly the same._ For one thing, the everyone is born at once thing I just can’t make work in the MCU, but I’ve found ways around that, so HERE WE GO. World details at the bottom.

* * *

Tony Stark is the same person he always was here, but because his life took a turn, everything is a little different. When he was 23, the Winter Soldier was free of his leash long enough to try a last-ditch escape maneuver that led to him waking his first cluster of kids, which just happened to be Tony’s. He was caught shortly after, before the child cluster could really understand what was going on, and that group had to find their way on their own. Bucky’s cluster consisted of Steve, as well as six of the commandos, most of whom, over the years, were convinced he was dead and his presence when he was able to get off the drugs and cryo were just echoes. 

His child cluster is more conflicted given he created it when supposedly ‘dead’. Tony, at the very least, is always alert to these days, and has put no small amount of searching into trying to find their ‘parent’.

Tony’s cluster consists of Rhodey, Pepper, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, Jane Foster, Stephen Strange, and Kevin Thompson aka Kilgrave (who in this world has his powers come from having his sensate ability overamplified to hell and back and tweaked to affect non-sensate which has a mind control effect. Sensate are immune to his abilities, even ones who aren’t active.)

Steve, upon being found and woken by SHIELD, is the parent of another Cluster Tony has a rather large amount of contact with, as they were activated in the middle of Steve panicking that _everyone was dead._ Steve, as a result of this, is actually much less unstable, as he has not been alone since this panicked bout of mental flailing.

That cluster consists of Natasha, Sam Wilson, Peter Quill, Hope Van Dyne, T’Challa, Helen Cho, Jemma Simmons, and Leopold Fitz. Suffice to say that Peter Quill was Not Expecting That. 

And finally, Tony, after some of the events that made a mess of everything and led to an approximation of the MCU (Though things kind of went off the rails fairly quickly things like alien invasions and alien artifacts and seriously awkward misunderstandings still happen) Tony decided to try his hand at birthing his own group of Sensate. This was around 2014 for him.

This ended up consisting of Wanda (though that was rough at first), Pietro, Peter, Harley, Darcy, and Three others who were born between ‘93, when Darcy born, and 2001, when Harley was born. (Really, it’s prime unnamed character space)

The actual MCU on the other hand… Obadiah slipped through the cracks because he was a sensate too and Tony ended up leaning on him… and was still tricked by him. So things are the same, but different, and Tony was never dealing with his traumas alone, nor were anyone else from his cluster, which, hey, means Kevin never turned into a supervillain. Silver lining!

* * *

Now, the basics of how the AU works. Each cluster is of 8 people who are connected on a quasi-telepathic, empathic, and physical even over long distance sort of situation, who can feel each other’s pain typically even if they don’t want to if it’s bad enough, and if they reach out, can talk to each other without help across the world or even into space. It can’t be intercepted, but it can be stopped, and if you’re not conscious no one can reach you. People inside these clusters can let others in their group use their skills and can understand all languages one in their group can as that person can. The amount of intimacy is a doozy.

In this AU, instead of everyone being born at the same time, the births are still staggered for canon birthdays, but it’s an unbroken chain, wherein the older one isn’t born until the next one is existent in a pregnancy. Only unbroken chains can have their latent genes activated in this AU.

In person eye contact with people outside your 8 makes you able to speak to, and physically poke at, others outside your cluster. You can’t make them stop once you initiate that so that could suck if they’re an asshole.

In this AU the serum only works on people with the genes that let them be sensate. It’s why the Serum was largely a failure, and also extends to Extremis. Killian and Maya tried to overcome a genetic bias they didn’t know was there with Extremis, and it’s why they couldn’t get it to stabilize. It’s also why Tony could fix it.

Birthing a cluster, as it was never explained in the series, for the sake of this AU works as such: The person ‘birthing’ actively reaches out into a spot in their mind that hums with ‘potential’ and tugs on it. This, in turn, sends out a signal to 8 people not of their choosing, all over the world, and immediately forges a brand new connection between them and those people, while imprinting some of who they are onto those people, thus it being a parent style bond, before those people fight through the process of acclimating to each other. The parent is supposed to help smooth this out and make the whole thing less scary.

Ideally, everyone gets along, but it doesn’t always work that way, and the bond in no way changes the personalities of anyone involved. If someone is a HYDRA asshole, then their cluster has to figure out how to deal with that.

Chemicals can be used to block connections as well as unconsciousness, and in this AU rather than being a separate species, the sensate are more of a widespread mutation, so to speak, and should someone bring mutants into the mix, those mutants could also be this, as a cross of genetics. Either way, Sensate folks are kind of a secret handled with care while political ones have tried to work out how to make it so that they could safely come out of hiding.


	17. Eldritch Tony AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Tony is actually an Elder God.

**Creeping Darkness**

Once upon a time, the Earth had a form of guardians that frightened away any that might contend for the small round planet. Aliens were unwilling to go there, and all in the nine realms knew that to come to Earth, or Midgard, was to die. The humans, such as they were, were a superstitious, suspicious people who would call on their gods, Elder beings of darkness and madness, with no concern for those who stood in their path, be they worshipers or those who would conquer.

These Elder Ones stood as the ultimate threat, for their only priority was that the planet was there for them to walk, and its state of being simply didn’t _matter._ It was a position that most of the other sentient beings simply couldn’t comprehend, and thus, they stayed away.

In time, the Elder Ones left their home less and less, turning from fact, to legend, to myth, with only the odd person reviving the public awareness of them, in a story or through another, less safe means. Those outside of Earth came to presume them gone.

They weren’t, of course, and people will ever poke and prod at that which people say isn’t possible when the time is right. The Veil being seen as something to reach through on certain days by particular people always meant that the doors never properly _closed._ There were cracks, ways for the less powerful, or those simply young enough to have not gotten to walk the Earth before, to creep through, using a human on the other side as a springboard to be able to explore.

And Tony Stark is one of these. His true name, his true voice, is something he doesn’t tend to share outside of using the utmost care, never wishing to do harm to his humans, but he was pulled through one of these cracks by a group with less than savory intentions in the late 60s. 

By 1970, he’d rather dealt with _that,_ and found his way to the Starks, lured in by Howard’s cache of impossible things and the simple intensity of power that swirled around the man in a way he rarely ever saw in humans. And to those Starks, he offered a deal. They were without a child, and he was, well, _curious._ He’d never be human, not really, nor would he forget what he was, but he’d make sure that they were healthy, and they’d show him this world from the perspective of their small lives.

It worked, at least, it worked well enough that he was _very_ upset when they died, leading him to be _far_ more vigilant with the humans who caught his eye after that. It, at the very least, prevented any unfortunate deaths among those, and he was satisfied with it, contentedly making weapons to humor the human that stepped up when his chosen father fell and taking them a bit further, amused by the way it seemed to unnerve those more sensitive.

But, all games come to an end, and his jaunt to Afghanistan was… annoying. Unpleasant. He couldn’t leave immediately because unleashing his abilities would have driven Yinsen mad or dead, with a possibility of one then the other. That he died anyway was _infuriating,_ and there were no survivors of his rampage in the wake of that. When he went home, Obadiah, well, he didn’t exactly fare terribly _well,_ but some of the things Yinsen had said, to say nothing of the interesting plan they’d put together… he ran with them.

SHIELD poking at him had amused him, enough so that he let them keep at it uncontested, watching them as much as he was watched, and when 2012 came around, well. Loki hadn’t forgotten the stories of the Elder Ones and an irritated Tony wasn’t exactly a well leashed Tony. Thor was a little slower on the uptake, but he caught on as well, which rather settled a few standing disputes on _that_ front. 

Poor Nick had no idea why they were so respectful after that. 

Of course, several other bits and pieces change here and there as well, because Tony isn’t _quite_ on board with how humanity should work, but he _does_ try. It’s just a little hit and miss when he succeeds and when he really _really_ doesn’t, that’s all.

* * *

This verse can be based in the MCU or something removed from it. I mean, if you want to summon Tony to some other timeline entirely I’m _game._ The above is general history for my MCU variant of this verse, that’s all. 

In his Elder form, this Tony’s very Heartless-like, with glowing golden eyes that are all the one color and shadowy everything that sort of trails his movements and blots out the light around him. 

Happy Elder God-invoking!


	18. Fae Tony AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Tony is a Font of Magic among the Fae.

**Fae Folk**

Once upon a time, there was a type of being that was called the Fae. There were many stories about these people. There were terms like Underhill and Courts applied to them, but none of them were truly accurate, because human record keeping is always subject to the opinions of those whose lives never do last long.

Some of these stories got close. The Courts, Summer and Winter, Seelie and Unseelie, they did exist, in their way. Some call them the Spring and Autumn instead, but the meaning is the same. It’s the Light and Dark, the Beautiful and the Ugly, the Prized and the Unwanted. 

There were other stories, about the Goblins, the Trolls, Elves, and similar things, that were nothing like the stories of the courts, and were taken to a place of high fantasy that would confuse greatly the unwary observer. Still, even some of these were closer than others, when a Goblin King with crystals and a land that bent to his whims and desires was strewn across the human perception. Still, even this was not quite right, for it was filtered through the eyes of an unknowing human child, and she could not See what was there to be Seen.

Thus leaving a story that is closer than any of these, but is still probably wrong in its way. There are those who are Concepts, beings of Belief and Magic and Nature, who give life to imagination but are born from something true. These concepts become the fonts of magic for their courts. There is the Summer Court of the Fae with its King, and he is one. There is the Winter Court with its Queen, who is yet another. There is the Chaotic Goblin King who is a Third, but there are those that are outside these courts, that fall between the cracks and who are there, created to do that very thing.

And this is the story we have come to tell. Every concept is born from a being, often inside the courts, but not always, and often wanted, but again, not always. This was one both wanted and not, but was certainly unique in spite of, or perhaps, even because of, that.

* * *

Basically, Tony’s father was a Winter Court Spellcrafting Fae, one of those who was a nightmare, complete with tentacles and generally not the sort of thing that would wander off into human spaces. His mother had butterfly wings, was beautiful in all the same ways that his dad was scary, and was a court darling. In the Summer Court where all is beauty. When her baby came out far too much like his father, she freely gave him away without a thought, leaving him to be raised by the parent who wanted him.

Tony is an oddball, as while his mother’s wings were those of a butterfly, all he inherited was their coloration, the shape and texture somehow turning out like a bat’s wings. When he goes among humans, he uses them as a monarch butterfly colored cloak and plays it off as being nothing strange. He has tentacles like his father, which he often curls around his waist and legs to hide when he moves around in mortal spaces, or among those of the Summer fae he doesn’t want to frighten. The colors of these are golden that fade to crimson, with the gold blending easily into the perpetual tan of his skin.

* * *

Onto the hierarchy! Basically, it goes like this! All Fae take in magic, it’s just their sources that vary. Some, like Tony, take it from inside themselves and it just sort of spills into the world around them. These usually end up the monarchs who have created realms that lesser fae come to. Tony, only being around 50 years old, is barely an adult and has far too tiny of a court to realize this is something he needs to do. He is a Concept. He has a realm of things he controls and which calls to him, and those are the ones who become his people.

From there are the Higher Fae, who are self-sustaining and can sustain a handful of others, then the Lesser Fae, who are the bulk, and while self-sustaining, cannot usually sustain others either. Finally are the Demi Fae, who cannot sustain themselves, and rely on those more powerful to keep them from fading back into concepts and magic entirely. 

Tony’s Concept is the New and Unique. Often these overlap, as things that are stuck between two things, such as a child who is of crossed species that usually doesn’t breed, or something new like some technology that no one has thought of before, or which was forgotten so long it might as well be new. In this way, Tony is the place where the unwanted go and they can call him for help and he will come. Because of his realms, unwanted children can call him easily, as they are both new and between, and their creations often fall into his hands.

* * *

His very first foundling being was Dum-E, who rather than being a bot as he is in the MCU, is instead a highly prehensile ball, covered in tiny little arms that looks like something you’d throw around in the yard. He’s green and orange.

Butterfingers is a puffball that’s pale pink and has about six paws and three eyes that rather resemble a kitten’s. She chirps. 

Friday is a purple Medusa crossbreed child whose features have a bit of an anime cast to them. Big eyes and small lips and mouth. She appears to be five.

Nandre is one of the babies, and she’s a little blue deerlike satyr baby. 

Tilm is a being like Dum-E, created from a child’s imagining (though not Tony’s this time) and who is rather stretchy like elastic and cannot make noise. 

Jarvis is the oldest, though he hasn’t been with Tony the longest, and Takashi is almost in the same age bracket. Both are fae that can self-sustain once they’re grown.

Vision and Ultron are the same type, but they’re younger than Friday.

Their details will all be added once they’re better established in the verse.

* * *

One last thing though, Tony can’t use magic like a normal Fae, no, he has to find a new way to do things every time he is introduced to a new spell. Lucky him.


	19. Kind of Angel AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Tony is an Angel. Of a sort. Not your typical species of Angel.

**So Angel is a Term used kind of Loosely**

Angels were a very strange sort of being to be. The books of humanity had their interpretation, of course they did. That was more or less what humanity _did_ with its spare time.

Because of this, they got as much wrong as they got right. After all, they had a whole lot of time to envision, and re-envision, and guess. And guess more. The things they came up with were genuinely baffling sometimes, in fact.

But the Angels didn’t interfere, and the Demons just thought it was a grand comedy. The jackasses.

See the line was a whole lot looser than humans seemed to think it was. It was a simple one too. Angels created and destroyed. Demons destroyed and created. 

Or perhaps not so simple?

In a broader sense, Angels are those whose first love is creation, and their destruction was in the service to others. Demons destroyed for the love of _that,_ and created only when they had a great need.

The line became muddled on the ones who created and destroyed with equal vitality, or the very odd ones that somehow ended up doing either task with extreme prejudice. 

All of them could fly, though the wing concept was one that left both angels and demons baffled. What need had they of _wings_ when they could simply shift their very beings and become… more?

Though it _would_ explain the many stories of falling. Lucifer was a notoriously horrible flyer when he was young. Crashing was not unheard of. He also had a horrible sense of humor.

Which probably led to him being such a villain in so many stories, because humans had an exceptionally amazing talent for holding a grudge.

And the _names._ They were so silly with their strange rules. After all, Lucifer’s name broke most of them right off, and no one seemed to notice _that._

One thing though, that humans never quite seemed to grasp, was that the Angels were among them, but that didn’t mean they properly _remembered._

In the case of some, they didn’t remember at all, but kept a portion of their talents as they took a… vacation of sorts, in being born a human. Such situations were always _always_ at the mercy of the brothers and sisters that were around an angel when they changed the weft of their soul to one that could fit a human lifespan and bound it down. Because they didn’t get to pick who they were born as.

In Tony’s case, it was a particularly mischevious healer he’d poked fun at one too many times who dropped him in as an attention starved little boy. He’d certainly done well enough, in many respects, but his angel had bled through. He couldn’t help it, he was one of the greater creators of his generation of angels, and he always felt compelled to keep at it.

He healed more swiftly than other kids and didn’t get sick. He could sleep less and eat unhealthily and be _fine._ And he just intuited everything to do with creating, making. Howard had, of course, been thrilled by his genius child and had further isolated him in his pride.

It wasn’t until he died the first time that something changed. One doesn’t die and come back without a change, everyone knew that, but the kidnapping when he was sixteen was… a mess. An accident. He hadn’t been willing to shut up and be docile and they accidentally smothered him too long in an effort to _shut him up._

His body had been dumped, and he’d ended up crawling home, alight with the idea for his AIs and desperately driven to impress. He also badly wanted to learn to fight, because obviously this wasn’t a thing he wanted to have happen again. He didn’t know he’d been killed, he just knew he had an ache in his throat for a day and no bruises to speak of. 

And that he’d been filthy, which had horrified his roommate Rhodey something terrible.

That need to impress had turned his gaze on weapons, offered willingly and eagerly to be perused and used by Obadiah and the company after his parents died. It was useful, he could protect people that way, and he’d been glad for it. 

And then Afghanistan. 

He’d died again and knew _more_ this time. He realized he’d for the first time in his existence created so much only to destroy and knew, _knew_ that wasn’t what he was supposed to be. So he’d flipped the entire thing on its head and set out with single-minded focus to right his wrongs, to living as long as he could even with the whispers of a different, brighter life curled around the edges of his awareness. 

Creating something that could fly was easy, and felt _right_ in a way nothing else really had. It wasn’t hard, flying, and he could see why so many loved it in the more limited sense most used. He was good at it. 

When it came to it, and the entire Loki and Thor situation came down, well. That was when his awareness really cracked open the rest of the way as he died _again._ For the _Third Fucking Time._ Clearly, an Angel had at some point been at fault for _that_ saying because it always took three blows to open up the memories.

And Thor was a god damn Demon. He could see it now, feel it in his bones, and he about laughed himself sick when he realized that. No one had understood why after waking and taking a glance at the people standing around he’d done that, but he hadn’t been able to _help_ it.

He’d just offered the god slash demon his hands and played it off as a result of his little accident with the portal. No biggie.

He healed faster after that, and chortled at all the angels and demons he could see now. Thor was the only other Avenger who was, actually, though Tony admittedly had to do something of a doubletake that Fury was apparently an angel? What? 

He wouldn’t have guessed that one. 

He kept it under wraps though, not mentioning it. 

But holy shit, then DC… And the fucking Winter Soldier. Another displaced Angel.

It was about then that Tony realized he should fess up because _damn it._ He could see that he wasn’t the only one who remembered being an angel, and that one there? Was _not happy._

Unhappy angels weren’t something he’d wish on _anyone._

The whole fire and brimstone thing? Raining fire from the sky?

Not as made up as a lot of other stories, and even a human caged angel was still going to be… a lot to deal with. Yep.

Damn it Steve, and your admittedly amazing taste in friends.

* * *

**Bits about Angels**

Angels and Demons are part of a sliding scale of the same species. They’re actually all one type of being, with their natural drives and inclinations marking them as one or the other.  
Think boys and girls with the genderfluid in between, rather than arch enemies across country lines.

* * *

The natural inclination of a Demon is to destroy things, or cause destruction. They _can_ create, but are not compelled to as they are to, well, wreck things. Some do this in careful asides that tear down relationships. Others just come in swinging and leave a mess behind them.

Angels are driven to create and to preserve their creations. This doesn’t mean they can’t wreck things. It just means that when they wreck things they REALLY REALLY wreck them so they won’t have to do it again anytime soon. Stories of avenging angels are sadly not terribly exaggerated.

Those between have both destroyed and created, or have somehow managed to do neither. They’re often the ones without a drive or with perhaps too much of one, depending. Michael was an Archangel by human reckoning, for instance, but was actually one of these between beings that both created and destroyed in equal measures.

* * *

All Angels and Demons can fly, as can the beings that aren’t quite either one. They cannot do this in human form.

* * *

Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory are inventions given to the humans by some of the more mischievous angels. Demons have since taken advantage of this in their various jaunts to earth to see how much mayhem it can lend their efforts. Thus, the Crusades.

They all, instead, live in a side along dimension of sorts where they can interact with the human realm, but it’s somewhat iffy and takes a serious toll on any Angels who try. Usually, they don’t bother unless they’ve been bound to human form first.

* * *

Most Angels and Demons come to Earth because they’re bored, curious, or both. It’s a rare Being that gets talked into it, but a less rare one that uses it as a kind of vacation to get away from the ‘relatives’.

An Angel must bind _themselves_ and their power before someone else sends them off to inhabit an unborn child. No exceptions. Someone trying to bind from the outside would only succeed in killing the Being they’re attempting to bind.

* * *

Angels and Demons live for a _really_ long time, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t family units and generations. A generation, however, tends to be a few hundred years instead of the human 20 to 50.

* * *

God is a confusing concept to a lot of Angels. They’re aware of what the humans say and believe, but it’s a rare one that claims to have met the Being that goes by that name. Some say it’s a Being that’s genuinely immortal.

* * *

When a Being is bound to human form, they remember nothing. They’re born and live as humans do, and tend to live a rather long time.

The first time they die, if it’s a ‘gentle’ death (say, decapitation, or being gutted, you know VIOLENT AND MESSY DEATH? is not) then they will revive. If they can be saved from the death they’ve been landed with, then they recover, and have a small sense of purpose. This purpose is whatever their inclination was as a Being before their binding.

The second time a Being dies, they recover faster than before, healing from things at a rate that’s more than the average human (or whatever race they’ve chosen), but not overly unusual. These things _are_ influenced by the body they have. If they’re, say, given the Serum, that boosts from the _Serum_ levels. If they’re just a normal flimsy human like Tony, it’s notably less. Along with the healing is an awareness of being different, of being _more_ and other Beings begin to seem a bit more _real_ than other people do. Usually, the small inkling of the first death will flare into a full-blown _need_ to do what they once did as an Angel or Demon, what made them have purpose.

The Third death is the most important, and hikes healing dramatically. It also gives the Being some of their abilities back, and they can remember their lives as a Being outside of their human life.

But hey, Fourth Time’s a Charm!

* * *

None of these deaths give back the ability to fly. But they do make slapping a permanent death on a Being a fucking hell of a lot harder.

If you wanna kill one, do it before they know what the hell they are, basically.

If you kill the body, the Being survives it and returns to what they were with their new experiences.

If you kill the soul, you kill the Being.

* * *

Beings are, and will perpetually remain, vulnerable until their human form dies. No exceptions. Anything that can be done to the body will still affect them as it always would have. They have no safety against mental invasion, though there is the saving grace that Being memories, not being attached to the body, are inaccessible by mind readers.

* * *

Beings who have unlocked their memories can always recognize one another, by what they are at least. It takes nicknames and names to clear up actual identities.

* * *

By that coin, most beings have Nicknames. Tony’s, for instance, is the Life Architect. No guesses as to why.

* * *

AND A LITTLE MORE.

Beings are energy life forms. That’s part of why they want to have human lives, much of the time, because Humans have the kinds of limitations these beings don’t, but they also have things that they can’t quite grasp. Their sort of machinery isn’t like human machinery, and would be impossible on our plane of reality, for example. Then again, they can also create a whole animal species if they tried hard enough.

* * *

Beings still have a society, it’s just. Different. There are less of them for one, and for two, when one dies, it never goes unnoticed. It’s pretty much never by age because they don’t age, as such, but a great work, either creative or destructive, can use up all they are and leave them dead at the end of it. This is the most common way to die when a Being feels they’ve accomplished all they need to.


	20. Wing AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People have Wings.

**The Wing Thing**

Some worlds had minor differences and changes that were indiscernible from one another. Some worlds have dramatic ones that lead to people having feathers and wings of other assorted types. It should be noted that in this particular world, it was nearly unheard of for a human being to be born without wings, and even more bizarre for those wings to not have feathers than to not have them at all.

Tony had once met one of these oddities, a man with furred wings like a bat, as a child, and he could safely say that it was perhaps one of the strangest things he’d ever seen. This opinion held right up until about 2012 with the whole Chitauri thing. 

Overall, most things remain the same with Tony’s history. There are, however, a few key differences.

When Tony was taken down in Afghanistan he had his wings trimmed down only barely shy of being actually clipped. Even if he’d been able to run, he wouldn’t have been able to fly with them like that, and that’s part of where the suit came in during _that_ particular escape. 

The suit has special metal pinions to cover and protect his wings, as well as to minimize the drag on them while in flight. He’s never been much of a distance flier so the change is not only gratifying but incredibly welcome as well. He’d always envied that Rhodey could do distances without desperately wanting to hug a thermal.

He was not, however, ever anything but smug that his wings were fairly waterproof, which was an unfortunate blessing after his time in the desert as he went from rather enjoying water to being unable to handle it in more than one kind of situation. 

His wings, in the shape and marking form of an Osprey, are a deep brown with a buttery gold in place of where the white would otherwise have been. They’re big enough to use, when they’re undamaged, and lead to no small amount of jokes wherein people try to feed him fish, but he still likes them. Not everyone has such subdued wings, of course, and in fact, it’s far from the norm, with most people having the brighter colorations of various type of non-meat eating birds rather than the mark of raptors.

Of course, there _are_ superstitions about what wings say about a person, and there will always be biases to offer things that have to do with the associated bird type to the people possessing the wings, but many of these things have yet to be proven, even with extensive studies. Mostly, peoples’ wings are just unique expressions to themselves and follow according to family lines in type, if not coloration, just like any other physical trait.

One thing to note, however, is that in society as it stands, losing one’s wings, or being born without them, is a crippling blow.

Which probably accounts for part of why Tony’s tower is one of few places with just as much comfortable ground level entrance access and convenience as it has higher ones. And better security on said higher ones to keep assholes off his balconies and landing pads who aren’t authorized.


	21. Shapeshifter AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Tony is a Lynx shapeshifter in a society where that's relatively normal.

**Fuzzy isn’t that weird.**

Okay, so today’s installment of ‘elaborate AU I hadn’t bothered to make a post about previously’ is shapeshifters! More clearly stated, it’s the human to animal shapeshifting community as it pertains to my view of how an AU like that works.

In this world, Tony is a European Lynx shapeshifter. Now, most everything else is the same, mostly, but for a few pivotal details.

Shapeshifters are actually only about a fifth of the human population, and some people have throwbacks all the way to extinct lines of animals (such as Rhodey being a European wolf, which are _huge_ by the way) or end up a blend of multiple lines if their family kept relatively to one species through marriage and such. Some families end up with kids who are all different species just because there were that many lines of animal types in the family.

The shapeshifter gene is recessive, and animal types are denoted by dominance within those. For instance, mammalian shifters are more common than birds which are more common than reptiles. Nobody is a fish shifter as it’s suspected that aquatic types died out fairly early in the evolution of humanity due to being unviable on land. Among mammals, feline and canines are the most common, just as raptors are predominant among birds, and predatory lizards are most common in that class of shifter. It’s been determined that, overall, prey animals only make up perhaps a fifth of all shifters, and only a third of those are not omnivores.

Now, as for how all this affects humanity as a culture, well, people are people. Shifters get discrimination heaped on them, so it’s not uncommon for those who are such a thing to keep it to themselves unless they’ve determined that the person they’re telling can either be trusted with it or is a shifter as well. Often, shifters don’t really get a choice about coming out in their adolescent years, as from the point of childhood to as far as late teens, a shifter might be unable to control when they turn into a stage-of-life similar variation. Which means that at least a couple times Howard and Maria had to rush in and scoop up tiny kitten Tony before anyone got a good look at him and realized what was what.

It wouldn’t have done for the press to figure him out. It’s also to be noted that shifters under heavy stress or ill health will at times also revert to their animal form and remain so until this has passed. Returning to human form when the stressor still present is not only difficult but often unwelcome and unpleasant as well. Suffice to say that college, for many shifters, is a minefield of negotiating being outed.

But, in terms of how discrimination works, it’s often a mess of people assuming things, and passing on those assumptions. Stories like werewolves and the like still exist, for all that shifters don’t in any way crave human blood, and while having animal instincts, do, in fact, maintain their human intelligence and ability to think in their animal form. There have been issues of people not trusting shifters in certain professions and even, once upon a time, having them banned from medical practices as a ‘safety procedure’. It also means that shifters were both coveted and targeted by the last world war’s conflict, both as attack animals, and as people to get rid of when they wouldn’t bend to such demands.

These days, many of those prejudices have been overturned in studies, but people are still cruel, and things like turning young shifters feral after a kidnapping isn’t unheard of. People like to forget that such a thing would apply to any human, and that shifters are simply more vulnerable due to their stress responses. The battle for equality, in the United States at least, has come incredibly far, and many practices once considered common or acceptable are illegal.

And this is the world Tony was born into, which he’s never squandered. His parents were both shifters, two different lynx lines from different parts of Europe, but Howard did his level best to keep that from being found out and affecting the business, which Tony did his best to do as well, until his late twenties. After that, it was less about trying to keep it a secret, and more about making it _not a big deal._

Really, the biggest change it made for Tony is having yet one more cause to keep an eye on and champion, and the way he did his architecture. Let’s just say that Tony has shamelessly made sure to have heated floors near really dramatic sunlit windows, shall we? And said floors have ridiculously soft plush carpeting to boot. 

As a last sidenote! It takes a _lot_ of skill to only shift partially, and many shifters either never learn, or never bother. Added to this, it’s almost unheard of for people to be able to speak in their animal form though there _are_ stories of the rare, old shifter who has learned some form of animal-form-only telepathy through sheer overwhelming amount of time spent in said form. Such a skill can be taught, should it exist, but most people believe that it is, in fact, just a myth.

Tony, of course, totally knows how to partial shift, and did you know Lynxes can both roar and purr? Because they totally can. And Tony is not afraid to purr when he damn well feels like it either.


	22. The God AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Avengers is a bit stacked with gods.

**Of Gods and Symbols**

Tony Stark has been alive a _really_ long time.

He’s gone by different names in different lifetimes. He’s been known in infamy and fame both. He’s been revered and he’s been reviled.

He’s had lovers who he’s seen from rebirth to rebirth, and who he always _always_ finds again, even if it doesn’t end up like _that_. The God of War, the God of the Sun, the Goddess of the Moon, the God of Destruction, the God of Healers, the God of Hunting, the God of Dreams, the Goddess of Death. There were others, there were many others, but those were the ones he nearly always saw in his lives.

This time, when he chose to be human, it was because his God of War and his God of the Sun had been taking an exceptionally long time to return to their proper plain and he, God of Rebirth and Fire, well. He was _bored_ and decided to go be human, well, humanish, to figure out what was keeping them. 

Tony Stark doesn’t really remember any of this when he’s born to Howard and Maria Stark. 

He’d never been very good with the on-off switch between godly power and human frailty, and this time was no real exception. He had quite effectively fucked up, and all he knew was that something was wrong, was missing. So, of course, he fixed that on his human parents and tried to live up to their hopes and dreams, because of course, that’s what the feeling meant.

It didn’t work. It left him restless and dissatisfied and like he still wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be.

So he tried harder. And harder. And harder still. 

And then they died, first the Jarvises, then his parents, and his fingers itched in entirely different ways, with a want to do something he didn’t know but wanted badly. In the end, he built instead.

He made his AIs. 

They helped, just a little, and as more years passed, and he built JARVIS, that helped more. It felt… right. 

He thought it was the building, really, and he threw himself into the formation of his weapons, the culmination of destruction which warmed something deep inside him in a way that other things didn’t, so he reveled in it, in the way he could wrap that reflected destruction around himself and feel soothed in a way he had always been missing. 

Yet the title of the Merchant of Death felt… wrong. 

He found out why within a week of hearing it. Then again, he could have done without the magnet in his chest. Still, the man who put it there looked mighty stunned when he mentioned that he _had_ died. Twice.

Tony just gave him a wry smile and tried to sort out how to make his powers actually, well _go._ Making them work in a human body, after all, was always tricky, and he still hadn’t found the gods he’d come hunting for. 

He didn’t manage to make the rebirth part work when Yinsen died. 

He did when Obadiah betrayed him, for himself at least. 

From there it was a series of events that grew progressively more frustrating because poisoning _hurt._

And then he found the God of the Sun, who for all he could see remembered jack shit of who and what he was, and felt like a total moron. Of _course,_ the man was fucking Captain America. He hadn’t banked on the others though. He hadn’t expected any of them to _follow_ him, let alone most of them. It left him flummoxed, and he had to wonder which others were down on Earth.

And if _even fucking one of them_ remembered their abilities. Or if it was just him. 

Of course, then he met the Hulk, which left the whole thing even further complicated because why were two…?

Still, the whole situation made Thor exceptionally adorable to him, because really. The only ones actually proclaiming they were gods were the only ones in the party who really, really _weren’t._

Still. He had to figure out how the hell to get people their memories back because this was just ridiculous. Of course, nothing helped when everyone scattered, and he managed to invoke his abilities for rebirth on Pepper during the Mandarin incident, so at least he finally had those properly under control. Then he set to trying to get to know who and what everyone was like in this life, as these humans, even when they tried to duck and weave.

Obnoxious.

And then the Washington D.C. fiasco reminded him he really should pay more attention to his _human_ affairs. But hey, it looked like the Sun God had found two of the rest of their missing number.

And explained where the fuck the God of War had gotten to.

He seriously, _seriously_ had to figure out how the fuck to knock everyone’s memories back into them though. This was just becoming absurd, and he didn’t feel like having to kill and resurrect everyone to make it happen, damn it. 

That was just not something they’d probably take well.

* * *

**Who is what god in Godlyverse!**

**Tony Stark:** God of Rebirth and Fire. He’s also been known as the God of Blacksmiths, the God of the Forge, the Phoenix God, and the God of Chaos. Clearly, these are not the titles he usually thinks of himself by.

* * *

**Steve Rogers:** God of the Sun. He has also been called the God of Protectors, the Patron Saint of Soldiers, the Earth King, and the God of Order.

* * *

**Clint Barton:** God of Hunters. Also known under the names of the God of Concealment, the God of Silence, the Lost God, and the Demon Protector of Children.

* * *

**Natasha Romanov:** Goddess of the Moon. She has also been known as the All-knowing Goddess, the Mother of Many Faces, the Shadow Maiden, and the Goddess of Delusion.

* * *

**Bruce Banner:** God of Dreams. He’s also been known as the Tranquil Death, the God of Creation, the Patron of Insight, and the God of Wishes.

**Hulk:** God of Destruction. Other names are the God of Endings, the God of the Forest, the Green Man, and the Summer God.

It should be noted that the Hulk is apparently the only god Tony’s run into who seems to have a clue who he is. Tony is bewildered why he’s sharing space with the God of Dreams though.

* * *

**Sam Wilson:** God of Healers. This particular God is also known as the Patron Saint of Doctors, the God of Flight, the God of Loss, and the God of Good Will.

* * *

**James Buchanan Barnes:** God of War. Other names include the God of Peace, the God of Change, the Winter God, and the God of Fallen Comrades.

* * *

**Wanda Maximoff:** Goddess of Death. Also known as the Goddess of Tranquility, the Goddess of Memories, the Queen of Magic, and the Lady of Vengeance.

**Pietro Maximoff:** God of Wind. Also known as the God of Messages, the God of Lovers, the King of Vengeance, and the Patron of Daredevils.

* * *

**Peter Parker:** God of Mischief. Also known as the God of Wonder, the God of Art, the Lord of Speed, and the Wrath of Darkness.

* * *

**James Rhodes:** God of the Winds. Also known as the God of Aviators, the God of the North Star, the Lord of Loyalists, and the Patron of Innovation.

* * *

**Howard Stark:** God of Hearth. Also known as the God of Fertility, the Patron Saint of Peace, the Spring God, and the Lord of New Life.

It should be noted that Tony had no idea his chosen ‘human’ parent was a god when he incarnated into this life.

* * *

Mind that this only covers people Tony has actually met, and that he can recognize these people the moment he sees them in person, or in some form of live action such as a news feed. He can’t tell from pictures, or from anything time fucked with like the newsreels, which is why he totally failed to know Steve and Bucky were gods until modern times, rather than in his childhood.

Also, he is usually the only one bad at this ‘curling oneself into a mortal shell’ thing, so he’s getting mighty suspicious that some other god is _truly fucking with his family._

I add people on request, though in my default verse neither Rhodey nor Pietro are actually gods. However, I am game to apply them vigorously as the inspiration strikes.


	23. Kidnapped Howard AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Dottie kidnapped Howard back in the day and Tony was born in Russia.

**Opportunistic Assholes: HYDRA**

In 1958, Howard Stark was declared dead on arrival due to severe burns caused by a house fire in his New York residence. It hit the newspapers, the radio, everywhere within days, and there were a lot of people who mourned the man in the years that followed. There were, of course, those who were vindictively happy as well, but those people were another matter.

All of this, of course, was unfortunate, but ultimately not that big of a problem in the greater scheme of things if not for one little problem. Howard Stark wasn’t dead. In fact, the body that arrived at the hospital wasn’t even his, though he _was_ injured in that same fire. HYDRA, however, carefully covered it up, taking advantage of Peggy Carter visiting her mother back in England in the woman’s twilight years.

It was a lapse that would cost the world, and because of his value with his abilities and knowledge intact, it took a handful of years, not to mention considerable applications of specific drugs and conditioning, to bring Howard Stark around enough it was safe to actually let him _do_ anything. It was only after this period that they set him loose on the serum project with all the tools toward that end at his disposal, giving him full access to what he needed to get a loose replication. There was a lot of thinking it was a victory when it seemed to work on Howard.

At least, right up until their control got shaky again but a handful of years later because of it, and the man ‘accidentally’ burned his notes during one of his bouts of displeasure with the company he was keeping. It was after this that the woman who would become Howard’s wife and the mother of his child was brought around as one of several educated combat agents who was to keep an eye on him after that. She was pretty, smart, and had a sharp sense of humor. Her name was Dottie Underwood, in some circles.

She also knew how to play a man, and used that to her advantage to woo Howard and get him back under control. Only after that additional control was finally in place was he put in contact with the Winter Soldier for the first time, to let him take over for the aging physician who had control before. Of course, this move meant being removed from the United States facilities entirely to Russia, and given the Cold War still in effect, this was no small feat.

Still, this was the circumstance Tony was born into when he finally came along. More specifically, that Anton Eduard Stark was born to. A compound in Russia, a serum modified father who didn’t seem to age anymore, a mother who was keeping his father under a tight least using every tool at her disposal, and the Winter Soldier not all that far away.

He was three the first time he remembered meeting the Soldier, having been declared intelligent and careful enough that he wouldn’t get in the way while his father was working or touch anything he shouldn’t. Nobody accounted for the child actually deciding he _liked_ the Soldier and climbing up to curl into the bewildered man’s lap to take a nap while his arm was being fussed with. 

When he’s older, he suspects that the move probably freaked out the agents more than his father, but from that day forward, Tony had no particular caution when he was allowed around the man, asking him questions, leaning on him, and even a few times hiding behind him when new unsettling people came around. After a time, it just became an accepted fact of life, and little traditions like the boy offering the man food treats after he’d been wiped and given orders, or being the first to offer his hand for human contact became the norm.

By the time he was six he was aware of the fact that the man wouldn’t remember him when he was worked on, but he never hurt him even when he didn’t know who he was, so it was ultimately fine. By the time he was ten, he knew all the triggers and had gotten a good long look at the book that had everything about his project and code words, memorizing it because the information seemed _useful._ He also by then had a very thorough knowledge about how everything concerning the Soldier worked, from biology, to his arm, to his chair.

He’d asked, more than once, about that chair, about why it had to be done that way. The answers he’d gotten had only made him admire the Winter Soldier more that he was such a Patriot that he’d go that far to be the best soldier he could be. That didn’t mean he didn’t think it _sucked,_ because it totally sucked, a lot, and he never liked being in the room when it happened. 

He was twelve when his mom was killed on one of her missions and never came back to the compound where Tony had spent his life learning and rattling around agents, and scientists as the lone child in the area.

He was thirteen when his dad shoved him into the Winter Soldier’s arms and told them to leave, to go as far as they could and _not come back._ He was thirteen the last time he ever saw his dad like that, and saw the regret on the man’s face as he looked from one of them to the other before he started opening the way for them to go.

He was thirteen the first time he ever saw the sky in person, and it _freaked him out,_ but it was also beautiful, the reds and oranges of dawn the first thing to meet his gaze even as he clung to the Soldier’s arm and did his level best to keep up with the man’s pace. It wasn’t long before the man decided he wasn’t quick enough and picked him up, but all that did was let Tony know that everything about this situation was really really wrong, because they were being chased. 

And his dad nowhere to be seen.

From there, one young Tony Stark, raised by HYDRA with Russian as his primary language since English was less commonly spoken, started the most complicated game of hide and seek of his life with the Winter Soldier as the only person on his team.

Next time there was a shift in the players, it was when they were tracked down by Kondot'yer, the Soldier of Fortune, who had been used as recompense for the act of releasing both the Winter Soldier and his son to the world. Howard Stark, after all, by then had the serum too, so _someone_ had to take up the slack.

Suffice to say that fixing _that_ was a whole other nightmare for them to tackle.


	24. "HYDRA" Tony AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony joins up with HYDRA... in an attempt to turn it into an equal rights and free speech movement from the inside. They haven't quite caught on because he's very vicious about it, and he hasn't caught on that that's the height of crazy irony. Suffice to say that he misunderstood HYDRA's mission statement somewhere along the way.

**Tony never had liked the Company Logo.**

When Tony was a little boy, one thing that he could always count on was that his father would tell him stories about the second world war, his time in it, and what it meant to be part of such a wonderful thing.

Then he would turn around and tell him that he helped create something that obliterated millions of lives in a breath and seem just as proud of that too.

This was the first inkling of the idea that maybe HYDRA hadn’t been entirely wrong, they just hadn’t been thinking _smart_ enough.

Howard Stark, being the kind of man he was, encouraged Tony’s interest in the second world war as he grew up, and seemed gratified that even in his worst moods that Tony would sit still if he told him just _one more story_ about his adventures. WWII became Tony’s obsession, both the public records and the private ones that his father thought he’d hidden well enough. 

He examined the tactics that had been used, as well as why people chose one faction or the other. He admired and despaired of the politics in both instances, and shook his head over the stupidity of launching _anything_ from the Nazi platform.

The propaganda had been good, and HYDRA had the right idea. They had the wrong execution, and Tony especially didn’t like the idea of hurting someone, even for science, against their will. He was on the mind that they should have picked up volunteers, like Rogers, for their side. They had the numbers, they hadn’t needed _prisoners_ to rise up and bite them in the ass because they made them better while ‘practicing’. 

The worst of the lot was Red Skull. The man had the wrong everything. He should have been a smokescreen, something to throw out there and distract while someone else did the real work, but he _wasn’t_. He was the frontline fighter and the asshole gave Mr. Perfect, his dad’s opinion was not lost on him, motivation to fight and destroy everything he’d been trying to build.

So, while he overall didn’t much care for how it had been created or even the shit that they’d _done_ to people, Tony could see through it and understand a reason _why._ Of course, this meant that he’d be able to pick apart the mess with some care and patience and figure out what to do about it. Did he want to sort out their goal? Did he want to see what was left behind of their work to salvage in some way?

He didn’t know, and was a good boy who grew up in the house where his father only liked him when he was telling him about his favorite, and went obediently off to school when the man was tired of doing even that. He got his degrees and built his weapons, and when his father died, he saw it as an opportunity. 

He was young yet, then, and while genuinely grieving his mother, was relieved that his father was _gone._ He promptly donated everything to do with Captain America to a museum, and sold off any duplicates his father had hoarded. He picked over the Howling Commandos information and fanservice, then did the same with that, keeping a couple of his favorite pictures of the group. They would serve as reminders.

He went through his father’s papers, his videos, everything he could find, unlock, and locate was uncoded, recoded, and destroyed as he crossed it. He watched the videos, made sure to remember anything relevant they might have on them, and then made sure that no one else would ever get their hands on what was in them. It was time-consuming, and it was months before he emerged, shaken by the kinds of things his father had looked into, while also resolved to make sure that only he _ever_ had that information.

It firmed his resolve that he wasn’t going to do as his father did and trust blind faith in anyone, ever.

He turned his eyes on Obadiah at that, on the person who had custody of his company until his majority, and he watched. He watched closely, but carefully, leaving space for the man to make or not mistakes without feeling scrutinized.

And he learned a lot. 

He learned that Obadiah wasn’t trustworthy. He learned how to interact with and contact the underground. He learned how to deal with a _problem_ once he turned twenty-one and had a chance to. 

That had taken a bit more careful planning, so the timing wasn’t suspicious, and he was nearly twenty-two before the bastard who got his parents killed was taken care of, jumped when going to meet one of his shadier contacts. Tony met them instead, and from there started to pick his way through the organization, always careful, always carefully ‘unaware’.

He was pretty sure he’d found HYDRA. 

It was hard to say though, and it took time, with Tony carefully weeding things out and consolidating his power. He never let any of the people who came under his steadily growing umbrella be mistreated. He wanted loyal, uncoerced people on his side because those were the ones that would be _smart_ about their actions. Because of that, some people called him soft, at first, though that stopped quickly when the people who started such rumors vanished almost as soon as they were spoken.

Just because he didn’t abide mistreatment, that didn’t mean he allowed people to be _fucking assholes_ about him either. He couldn’t afford to. If he wasn’t going to be cruel, he had to be efficient, and he could _do_ that. And after a while, his people didn’t need his direct intervention to act on situations that needed it.

By the time he hit thirty, he had a faction, and someone from HYDRA approached him in a more official fashion. 

Once he heard them out, listening intently to every word they had to say and committing it to memory… well. He shot them. He left his people to deal with the mess, then went back to work, refining the weapon he’d been creating before he’d called out of his house.

The next representative, a year later and more careful than the last, was respectful. They offered him an incentive. They certainly managed to incense him at the very least, though he hid it behind a charming smile, and told them there would be a negotiation. Of course, this negotiation, when it happened, turned into something of a coup, his people overrunning the faction, taking out anyone who fought and sorting out the remains. Anyone who enjoyed being cruel for the sake of it didn’t get to pass go, didn’t get a second chance, and was left to be one of those painting the facility red.

Those two were how he found out about the fate of one James Buchanan Barnes, and it took four more years to actually track him down and get into position to take charge of him. When he found out how they’d gone about sublimating him… he was both impressed and furious. He’d found the Russian’s work first. They’d done it better, more carefully, and more effectively than their HYDRA descendants had. THEY had just been using him as a point and shoot and not treating him like a valuable and well-trained human being. 

Sure, _no one_ had been treating him like a human being, but there was a _difference_ in _degree._ So he hadn’t been pleased. He’d examined the merits of mindlessness against the merits of intelligence, and like it always did, intelligence won. He’d have the man loyal or not at all, and nobody could force loyalty out of a person who had no choices. 

So he’d destroyed the equipment, everything but the cryostasis the soldier was in, at least, and had dismantled everything while going through everything, one by one, and finding the files about him, pulling them from circulation, from accessibility, and in general setting up the process of making total sure that no one would be able to steal the man _back_ from him. Only then did he wake him up and start the process of integrating him with his people. 

The negotiations to make that happen had been… _special,_ but as more time went on, and he proved that he wasn’t about to wipe him, freeze him, or otherwise abuse him, just like he’d said he would be the case, he relaxed. And got protective.

It was very possible the man remembered things from his life before, after a time, but he never asked.

Not everyone was pleased about the loss of such an Asset to an unknown faction, or rather, the extended and destructive hunt to find him, and while out chasing a lead just months before he would have finally made contact, he got grabbed. 

He was not impressed with the accommodations. He was even less impressed when everything went to hell and he got screwed over worse before the kidnappers lost him to some other group _entirely_ who from what he could tell, had _literally nothing_ to do with Hydra. 

Oh, and the chest full of shrapnel, he could have lived without that for a thousand lifetimes, thanks. But, there was an upside to the whole thing. He came away with a nifty new pair of inventions along with some new trauma, Rhodey had flipped his shit over the sojourn, and he landed himself an easy-in to SHIELD. 

One that had nothing to do with his father OR with HYDRA. Plus, flashy new superhero status. It was pretty fabulous, actually, and he played it to the hilt, much to the despair of his lieutenants and Pepper, but he worked with it, and found his Soldier in the aftermath.

It was safer. Just like his Soldier-boy promptly hid in the shadows, so Tony hid in the spotlight. There was nothing about him that was secret that anyone would ever see, his faction was protected and kept away from SHIELD’s eyes, and James was neatly tucked away in the kind of work that made him happy, which hilariously seemed to be guard detail if nobody needed dealing with. 

It worked. The palladium issue was solved quickly, given his blitz on his father’s files so long ago, and SHIELD never had cause to think him unstable. 

It really was a win-win by the time that whole Avengers thing came along. It even had the added bonus of him being fully equipped with a way to get Steve Rogers onside when he popped up. Which he intended to use, because he was _practical._

And maybe, once he was done making his way through and dealing with the main body of HYDRA, he’d make the god damned logo an actual _hydra._

* * *

**Hydra bits and bobs**

Tony refuses to allow the normal HYDRA logo to be put on anything to do with his faction. This is not because of paranoia, though there’s certainly some of that, but mostly because it offends him.

It pisses him off that they’re using a kracken to represent HYDRA when it’s a dragon, not a god damn octopus. In fact, Natasha helped sort out this intense logo frustration and suggested an alternative approach. He might have started sneaking this pattern onto things here and there as a test spin.

So far nobody has figured it out beyond his faction.

* * *

He gets EXTREMELY offended anytime someone tries to Hail HYDRA! him, because they’re not Nazis, they can have taste and decorum and _not be complete morons with a warcry._

Now, he has nothing against warcries, but he’s a fan of not getting shot in the face, and pulling that noise _will_ get you shot.

See? Simple cause and effect.

* * *

Tony has been increasingly disappointed in HYDRA with every installation he… appropriates. The death tally is starting to lean further and further toward total annihilation since anyone who puts being a sadist above the concept of clear thought and usefulness pisses him right the hell off. If it’s a commander, he’ll shoot them in the face because they’re probably ruining perfectly good recruits, and making them not only not as effective as they could be, but probably useless should a peaceful world actually be _achieved._

Not that he doesn’t give the underlings the chance, all the chances even, but sometimes he wonders what the fuck happened that made these people even think that what they were doing was ever going to lead to awesomeness. 

So, lots of shooting in the face.

* * *

Tony really doesn’t feel all that bad at all about killing people who fuck with him in HYDRA. They have all the warning in the world to not make him mad, but people still keep trying to poach his people, which is pretty much a death sentence. Once someone is part of Tony’s faction, they’re _part of his god damn faction._

If someone is a spy, he’ll leave them be right up until they feed back information once, if they’re from another HYDRA faction. Then they’ll be informed of their choices. Should such a thing happen a second time, they die, because obviously, their loyalty is to the other side. 

By this token, Tony’s spying is… unorthodox, and he’s put extra effort into getting JARVIS as deep into the world systems as humanly possible.

* * *

Tony still makes weapons. He never stopped, though he did slow down dramatically to focus on his other projects, using the situation that led to his getting the reactor as an excuse. There was no Obadiah to fight him, so he could do what he pleased mostly unhindered. This led the public to making the mistake of assuming it was no longer a _thing_ , though the military is better informed.

* * *

Tony periodically goes out and trashes labs of other factions and steals all their stuff.

This has included people who were experimented on.

* * *

Tony only takes people into his faction who can willingly agree to be there. If they’re not willing but terrified, he’ll give them a chance to go. If they try to fuck him over once they’re free, they die.

* * *

No one has ever tried to take his arc reactor.

* * *

Tony likes helping SHIELD and cockblocking that HYDRA faction because it pisses Pierce off.

* * *

Tony only gave Rhodey an armor after sweet talking him into his faction. Rhodey still has no idea what it’s a faction _of_ but he’s been convinced to stick with Tony.

Pepper has never been informed officially either, though she knows about several of Tony’s lieutenants and aids, including the Winter Soldier. She hasn’t spread the information around. She also doesn’t run the company, so that probably makes sense. Tony’s not quite so trusting on that front.

* * *

The only reason Tony hasn’t gone after Strucker is because the asshole actually has an idea what the word ‘volunteer’ means.

* * *

Tony got Natasha on his hunt to find the Winter Soldier. He also made sure she still went to SHIELD.

* * *

Winter yelling at Tony for nearly dying in New York is an excellent way to get Steve on his side. Apparently.

* * *

Tony’s faction likes to call themselves ‘The Vanguard’, or when they’re feeling particularly vindictive toward HYDRA, ‘The Vanguard in HYDRA’. Nobody’s bothered to inform Tony of this, and the fact that they have a name is something he’s vaguely aware of, but he thinks it’s little v, not big V and nobody has bothered to tell him there’s a difference. The name pre-dates their joining with HYDRA due to Tony in early 2003.

He hasn’t caught on to that either. They figure that as long as he keeps doing what he’s doing and doesn’t fall in with the HYDRA party line that it’s fine.

* * *

It should be noted that most people only catch the absolutely backward irony of Tony’s philosophies against what HYDRA itself stands for when he’s not in front of them to realize he really should find it funny. His people think he’s noticed.


	25. Incubus Tony AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein being an incubus is mainly a genetic quirk that nobody bothered to tell Tony about.

**Sex is less fun when it’s a diet.**

Incubi are a myth, by the view of most people on the planet. In fact, most people think that the very idea is hilariously outdated, but fascinating.

Tony Stark wished he’d really looked into those myths sooner.

Having been born the same way anyone else was, he’d never really understood that there was anything _weird_ about the way his father slept around, especially given that his mother clearly didn’t mind, and that had served as something of a role model. The man had rarely, if ever, gotten sick, and when he did, it was always increasingly worse until his mother spent a lot of time with him.

He just figured that it was because someone was putting all their focus into making him _better._

Which was sort of true.

He just didn’t really understand what made it true until he was nearly fifteen, that was all. Apparently being a bit late to the puberty train was normal in the Stark family, and his case was no different. Of course, that didn’t make being absolutely _tiny_ compared to his classmates, increasingly so as he failed to hit a growth spurt until _college,_ of all things, any better. No, it made it considerably _worse._

But when it came, it hit hard, and suddenly the bullies were a little less rough on him, and the girls a lot more interested.

He’d been baffled.

His dad called it charisma.

His mom called it inevitable.

Neither one called it what it was. Hormones. Ridiculously appealing hormones, apparently.

He was just grateful, after careful reading when he got older, that he wasn’t really like the stories. In fact, he hadn’t even realized that after his first… _experience_ with sex, that he’d sort of hit an on switch somewhere inside himself that meant he’d always be hungry thereafter. He was too busy exploring and being a prodigy college student to really _get_ it.

Which was both good and bad, because it meant that it wasn’t until years later, well into his adult life, that he really grasped that there was anything strange about him at all.

Sure, he’d never gotten sick, and he’d always recovered that hair faster than the people around him when he got hurt, but he figured that was just good genetics, like his intelligence.

He didn’t think anything of it when he was horribly weak and sick in the cave, guessing it was the torture and poor conditions doing it, to say nothing of the _magnet_ in his chest.

He didn’t think anything of it that his complete lack of sexual contact, once he had the reactor, was a new factor he needed to take into account.

It was after the Palladium was fixed, with Pepper, that something finally changed. He’d never actually had a consistent partner before her, so he’d never really noticed any kind of side benefits of sex. If he was honest, their honeymoon phase didn’t really change that either, and she certainly seemed energetic enough to distract him from scientific thinking. In fact, their relationship made him feel better than he had in years, at that point, but he attributed that to the new element in his chest and the fact that he was _happy._ He didn’t know that having a solid partner, partners really, made any kind of difference to his biology.

Right up until the next time he got hurt in the armor, and he healed.

Fast enough to notice it.

Fast enough Pepper definitely noticed it.

And neither of them had a clue what could have caused it, because it was new, strange, and definitely not the element in his chest like he’d thought was the case because of the poison.

It wasn’t until they were separated for long periods of time after they got together that it really became a _thing_ though, with Tony in New York and Pepper in Malibu. That was when he got sick again, like he had after Afghanistan, minus the bout of poisoning that he’d been blaming it all on the first time.

In fact, he went so far as checking for poison, it was so unusual, and the healing, speedy as it had been for a while, was back down to rather normal sluggish levels. Which led to a series of tests that left him with one rather hilarious conclusion.

If he didn’t have sex, he got sick. He got weak. If he did have sex, well, he had to confirm it, but apparently, if he had sex, he felt better, and if he had a lot of repeat sex, he felt even better than _that._

…He had no idea how to break this to his teammates, but he suspected that they really needed to know. Accelerated healing, after all, was nothing to sneeze at, and he had no idea what other benefits he got from it yet, and sort of wanted to know.

* * *

**Details on the biology:**

He puts out hormones that either aggravate or interest the people around him. Sometimes at once even. It’s subtle and doesn’t actually control anyone in any way.

Regular partners, this can be more than one, sort of add more to his pool of energy because his body will come to recognize their ‘signature’ of sorts and sync enough that he can take more from them. This doesn’t have adverse repercussions save making the partner tired, and that’s easily slept off. This is why he heals more quickly with a regular partner, and that would increase dramatically if he had multiple partners, not that he’s actually aware of this.

One night stands are like snacks, enough said.

Kisses and cuddling can have similar, if lower key effects to ease off the sick feeling that happens when he goes without. It means he’s nearly perpetually at least a little touch starved.

The element in his chest actually filters on the same energy frequency as Tony’s default feed state, which is why he got such a boost from it. It’s not sustainable, however, and is the equivalent of trying to survive on candy.

The gene is only inheritable through the male side of the family, and his type of quirk is not the only one along these lines out there. He’s just the only one he knows about.


	26. Mermaid AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Underwater shenanigans. Mertony is practically a seahorse.

**A World Underwater**

There is the Air above and the Deep below, and the Merpeople are their own advanced society. The calendar they follow is very different from the one above because they don’t use the moons for their charting of the passing time, nor the sun. They use the tides and the movement of certain underwater plants to track what they’d call days hours and years.

They have wars, they have conflicts, and overall, they also admittedly have in turns curiosity and disdain for the frailties of the people above. Crossing the species line has happened, though bewilderment over _how_ is more than real enough. That is not to say there aren’t males and females, of course there are, but the anatomy is just _different._

* * *

**Society**

The Merfolk, or as they know themselves, the Ulure, are a rather advanced culture. By above standards, they are people who are considered warlike, but this is largely due to the fact that more than one city of them have to contend with hostile, mereating fish. This means that almost everyone in the culture is armed at all times in some way.

They use metals less commonly than above, and building anything at hard angles is not only unheard of but incredibly impractical. Instead, it’s fairly common for homes and furniture to be grown, and for technology to be tucked inside these gardens as is convenient. There are even quite a few people whose entire scientific focus is to find ways to more efficiently grow and give function to their useful item creatures and plants.

There are others, like Tony, whose focus is on things less biological than mechanical, and who have taken ideas from above to sort out _their_ approach to technology and finding ways to use, or even advance that, below the surface. It has made the cities infinitely safer.

* * *

**Biology**

The Ulure have families, children, and a hierarchy just as those above do. They still have attachments and language, but there the resemblances diverge. 

While having a similar facial structure to humans, and even patches on their bodies that look like human skin, the Ulure are scaled over their entire bodies, with the areas that look like skin simply having a far finer scale configuration. Eye color varies wildly, and what humans would think is hair is actually a mane of fine spines that have slowly been evolved to something that isn’t dangerous to touch. However, alarming an Ulure can lead to these spines being released and this can actually be quite painful for the recipient. 

All Ulure have clawed fingers. Their ears are flexible and mobile so they can be folded down against sand or dangerous materials in the water, much the way eyelids serve. All Ulure also have sharp teeth as they are biased toward eating meat as it is easier to cultivate. Gills can be found in the upper chest region, often hidden among decorative scales within the design of their personal markings. Ulure _can_ survive out of water and breathe air, but they find the experience incredibly distressing and will constantly seem on the verge of having what seems to be an asthma attack. 

There are two predominant species of Ulure, with a few others scattered in from other parts of the Great Oceans that won’t be listed here. Of the two species, one more superficially resembles whales and dolphins in their body configuration, and these are the Ulure who have few children with a longer gestation span, with the females as the primary caregivers. They are often more drab in appearance, with no embellishing fins and are known for their maneuverability and efficiency.

The other species of Ulure is flashy, bright, and could be compared to a Beta-fish crossed with a sea horse. These Ulure do, in fact, have the males as caretakers rather than the females, usually having two or three much smaller children that the males need to keep close in a pouch hidden among their far more impractical fins. The females of this kind of Ulure are often much more streamlined, if brightly colored, and are stronger than their male counterparts. The males usually have much more extensive fins, and while fast, are among the most pampered of the Ulure people because of their rarity. Most males of this kind of Ulure are fortunate to have made it to adulthood because natural curiosity and their bright coloration makes them a high-risk target for predatory fish.

This last category is the one that Tony falls into for this world. [As seen here](https://www.deviantart.com/skeren/art/Mertony-775819483).

* * *

**Personal History**

Tony has always been a ridiculously curious Ulure. He is one of those who too often investigates the surface, and who has more than once nearly exposed their people slipping too close to submarines and underwater probes sent down from above. He’s compensated for this with his brilliance, improving and refortifying the defenses of the city he grew up in without any hesitation, and sharing anything he found valuable or mimicable that they hadn’t previously considered. He also was in turns baffled and found it hilarious the things that humans clothed themselves in to come under the water with them.

Born from parents who were a crossed pair of the two predominant types of Ulure, he was an only child and doted on heavily when he was young. As he got older, this tapered off, and his father’s trips away from the city increased. When he was barely full grown, his parents went off on one of their trips together, and they never returned.

After that is when he truly came into his own creating, and he was successful, wildly so, which, unfortunately, in turn, gave him enemies as well. Suffice to say, being under the ocean didn’t exactly change much in the way of _that._

Tony’s scales are deep blue, reds, and golds, with bright blue along his chest. He’s strong, in no small part due to his crafting, intelligent, and more than able to fight if he needs to. He also likes to use his flashy appearance to trick predators, be they people or fish, into range so that he can deal with the threat they pose.


	27. Pacifist AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unlike a modern AU, the only thing different here is that the serum... didn't work. Also known as Videogame empire Tony.

**Wherein Game Design is Intense**

Tony Stark was the kind of man who never let an idea pass him by unexamined.

This meant that sometimes he did some truly, ridiculously stupid things. Like the not-quite rocket launcher he’d made when he was ten entirely for the purpose of _shooting paintballs._

When he’d destroyed not only the range he was practicing on, but the good time that his birthday party had had right up to that point, he decided that maybe weapons design was something he shouldn’t look into too deeply. Sure, that was the company that his dad ran, and he got all kinds of perks in being rich but…

If a paint gun, no matter how amped up, could cause _that much damage_ then what the hell was the company his dad ran putting on the market? He still loved explosions, and that part had been _awesome._

But people had been scared. He hadn’t liked that part. 

Not even a little. 

So he’d learned everything that his dad had to teach him about technology, and his projects shifted away from the weapons part of things, into AIs, energy, and, as he got older, how to make cosplay costumes fabulously real with technological gadgets.

After the first time one of those ended up weaponized because someone had found it laying around the house, he’d gotten a hell of a lot more careful where he put his things and started to document _everything._

He was at MIT when the video game industry really caught his attention, but those plans got put on hold not long after he’d put together Dum-E, the fledgling interest quashed under the sudden weight of a _weapon’s company_ and his parents being dead.

But that was okay. In the four years between then and assuming control, Tony had started to make plans, one eye constantly being kept on the game situation to see if that was really going to _fly._

At first, Obadiah didn’t like it, thinking it was a waste of both time and money. However, the fact that Tony didn’t stop offering his weapon ideas when cornered into it meant that he didn’t fight it. Military contracts were still rolling in, and the man didn’t realize that they were gearing more and more toward interactive training technology and armor as the years went on. There was still enough weaponry to keep it off notice, after all.

By the time Tony was thirty, the weapon’s division was all but defunct, and the other parts of the company, the gaming, the personalized miniature AIs for people to build up a game profile from, trademarked, of course, the interactive networking via satellites for the phone system… it was all the main lifeblood of the company and the best in the industry at that. 

Obadiah, when he finally realized, took it poorly, ended up in jail, and Tony was finally free to just create things without someone hanging over him like a nightmare.

He was thirty-two when he created his first holographic interface that was viable for public use and distributed it for his game systems. He was thirty-five when he took the last steps, with JARVIS’ help, of course, to building a game world that integrated _everything_ he’d been creating in his life and made it a gift to the world. 

It was called Marvelous Heroes and was based in part on the stories that his father had told him about the war when he was child, including the positively mythical project that he’d been part of that never got off the ground because of its sheer impossibility. Not that that had ever stopped a Stark, and he’d dug into government files, seeing what kind of _idea_ it had been, and imagined what it might have been like if it had worked.

And then he made it work in his story, giving his first main character all the dreamed up abilities that seemed to fit what that project would have gone for, layering in a history, tragic side stories unlockable of course, friends, the works. He wasn’t the only one, with him making a whole series of Main Characters after the first game was released that people could pick from, each with their own unique, and sometimes horrific, past. Some were good guys, some were bad guys. Not all the parts of the world were set in the same timeframe or _stayed_ in the same timeframe. 

Choices had consequences, and he programmed that too, each main having an AI that would change the choices depending on earlier choices, and get more and more different for each player as a result. The stories all interlocked, and every time he added a new main character, it would affect the way the world was working for everyone.

The public version was less intense than the one he had in his home, of course, the players having to sync on the internet to interact with the Master AIs of the world in a sort of regular check-in, but that was okay. It kept Tony busy, made people _happy…_ and somehow resulted in the side effect of having living, breathing, AIs that weren’t supposed to be sentient at all running around inside their world and aware of what was outside of it. He couldn’t even begin to fathom how they handled the players out there who liked to play their mains as opposite as possible from the basis of the character.

He’d triple checked that he was the only one who knew about the whole _sentience_ thing, but it seemed that the splinter AIs that had to be synced weren’t aware of anything outside their program parameters and whatever the master versions added during a sync. Players just thought of it as an update, and people were usually pretty excited for the bi-monthly login when it was prompted.

Sure, some people bitched that they should have been given a ‘complete game’ but it just plain wasn’t that kind of world. If they wanted that, they could go buy Final Fantasy. No, they had to pay a fee to sync, and a fee if they wanted to add a new main character to their roster, maybe a fee for some special release items or side story, but otherwise, the game was theirs once they bought it.

No monthly subscriptions, no regular harassment. They should be _thrilled._

Still, sometimes that landed him with trying to figure out what to do with a character who was looking him dead in the eye through the monitor and asking him what the hell he thought he was doing to their story now. So, that was a thing. At least they couldn’t interact with anything when they weren’t visible to him on his screen, for the most part, so that was an upside. He didn’t want to imagine what they’d do if any of them were more… able to do things than that. As it was, his holographic interface sometimes made things… awkward.

JARVIS thought the entire situation was hilarious and refused to help. Of course.

* * *

**Marvelous Heroes**

I’ve gone over the framework of how Tony ended up essentially a pacifist and created the video game world of Marvelous Heroes. Now I am explaining how it _works._

* * *

The first speaking AI Tony made was still JARVIS. The AI keeps an eye on the company of course, but his by far largest task is making sure that the firewalls that keep the game AIs contained away from the wider internet are up to date and entirely solid. The world does not need villain AIs running free on the internet. They have limited access for game purposes, but no. JARVIS doesn’t mind trolling Tony about it from time to time though.

The Second was Steve. Based on old project files of his father’s for something that never got off the ground, he picked one of the prospectives and crafted the story of Captain America around this guy. After a while, he realized that the AI was aware and would react to him, not unlike JARVIS, and that affected and changed his story. He did a hell of a lot of research into the time period and how to approach WWII. Originally, that was the only era the game was set in, and Bucky’s story ended when he ‘died’. However that happened. Alternately, if Steve died. The Winter Soldier storyline came much much later.

Hilariously, Tony moved through time with a solid progression, creating Natalia who later became Natasha off the opposing character to the one he modeled after Peggy Carter who his dad had known once upon a time. Other characters were built this way, branching off the previous tiers until he finally made a character based off himself and unleashed Iron Man into the game. It’s the only character without a sentient AI behind it, because that’s a little too creepy even for Tony. It makes more work for him, sure, but he doesn’t mind.

* * *

Characters have multiple story endings and multiple story paths that can be taken. Because it’s a learning AI system that the AIs for the game are created on, every player’s experience will be different. Due to this, if a player wants to change their choices they need a new save file, because every save file, even under different characters, has every character affect every other character in the universe for that save. Every choice matters, and if you’ve followed certain paths, certain choices won’t be open to you. Including story options. It should be noted that there is never clear right and wrong answers a lot of the time, and _any_ character in the game can be a villain or hero with enough work.

Because of the ripple effect of how everything works, players can end up with wildly divergent effects. If you switch between characters and cage your responses, sometimes you can also create something truly weird. 

The way the game is structured, you buy characters and all their attached storylines, instead of buying expansion games. When you add these new characters to existing saves, it changes your storylines. So buying, say, the Winter Soldier would open up paths in all points in history between WWII and Modern characters because that character was around and a player can pick anywhere on that timeline to explore.

There are Syncs every month that players can pay a fee to do which gets them all the new equipment that either Tony or other players have put into the game. There are serious disclaimers that any customized gear might end up incorporated into the game. Of course, players get rewards when this happens, those being anything from free syncs to entirely new characters if they inspired them. The reason for this is that AIs have a tendency, during the Syncs, to steal gear for themselves that they didn’t have previously. 

Syncs also are when the master AIs go through and update all their incarnations on the internet and examine the trends about themselves and what they want to learn about it. Characters like Steve are put out with those who try to make him evil while Loki eternally squints at people who try to make him orderly. They don’t change their storylines as they stand, but they do add their opinions of how the story is going to the ones the splinter AIs have, and incorporate the world changes into the greater world that exists.

* * *

There is a free play mode where people can run their characters around and go on story quests with other players. This can result in multiples of characters running around together and it’s a much looser world that doesn’t tend to have permanent effects like personal saves do. This is more social than anything, and good for showing off whatever you’ve done with your current favorite character.

Managed to get Steve to be an evil bad guy? Run him around the open world setting and have him meet nice guy versions of himself. Sometimes this is the only way to find unlocked gear, which if taken back into a save is now findable in-save, but the player has to find it via story.

This is also the only time players can interact with one another as most play is entirely solo.

* * *

Some characters come with certain effects! Loki unlocks genderbending for instance, as a magical thing, but also opens up the world and stories on Jotunheim. Thor unlocks Asgard. You have to have Tony before you can start sending characters outside their normal eras using time travel. You have to have characters from a certain era to _do_ anything in that era. If you start with Tony, for instance, you can’t do anything in WWII unless you figure out the time travel storyline or you have someone _from_ then.

It should also be noted you can only ever find gear for the era your character is in forward. No taking modern EMPs to WWII without time travel timelines.

Another kind of item that can be found is a ‘magic’ item and is only accessible after you get Stephen Strange is one that lets you ‘cross dimensions’ and this makes it so that whatever character has the item in question can move between saves and this messes with the storylines in both the saves in question. 

There’s more, of course, but this is about what Tony created, not his personal workshop and the antics his characters get up to. Though he does screencap them and send them to the players who he’s drawn the most inspiration off of with their chosen favorites from time to time.

* * *

Hardware! Marvelous Heroes is a game that spans the entire world by the modern day and has a few dozen main characters spanning a hundred years of history, to say nothing of alien characters. This takes up a lot of memory. Because of this, before the first character stories were ever released, Tony built an incredibly high memory storage system to house it. 

The hardware serves as a computer base that you attach to your TV, and while there are other games, it’s largely devoted to Marvelous. What makes it worth it aside from the game itself is the Holographic control interface. You can configure your settings to have your controls in whatever shape you want if the defaults just plain don’t work for you. The holograms can be used to play a rougher variation of the game if you want to avoid television, but the detail and interactive quality are always better on-screen. Modern screens anyway.

It should also be noted that one can pay a monthly fee to always be able to access the internet for non-game purposes via their hardware, regardless of if they have any other kind of internet connection. This fee would also allow players to play multiplayer freely at any time instead of having to connect to other internet sources. Anyone paying the Sync fee will always be able to do it if they have power for the system.

Said hardware was fondly nicknamed Magic Box during creation, which then carried over to become Stark’s Magic Box in production. Needless to say, the common name for the system is the SMB.

* * *

Order of characters arriving in the game as playable storylines. Please note this is NOT the order of appearance, which is largely done in MCU fashion. Each character release was individual, but the grouping is by what string of characters Tony did before changing story tracks. 

Steve-> Bucky-> Howard Stark-> Red Skull->  
Natasha-> Fury-> Tony-> Peggy Carter->  
Winter Soldier-> Rhodey-> Vanko-> Hammer->  
Thor-> Loki-> Bruce-> Sam-> Clint->  
Dottie Underwood-> Edwin Jarvis-> Ana Jarvis-> Whitney Frost->  
Zola-> Wanda-> Pietro-> Stephen Strange->  
Pepper-> Obadiah-> Pierce-> Zemo->  
Scott-> Peter Parker-> T’Challa->  
Ultron (EPIC FAILURE THAT WAS PURGED IN LESS THAN A WEEK. He caused a worldwide blackout of the internet on SMBs and it was _chaos_ )-> Vision  
Quill-> Gamora-> Groot-> Mantis->  
Nebula-> Drax-> Rocket-> Thanos


	28. Dragon AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is a dragon. And Dragons used to be rulers too.

**All about Wings and Fire**

The Carbonells had a legacy that spanned back over hundreds of years. The family was known for their dragons, and had, admittedly, risen fairly high in Italy when that was still a done thing.

It had been three generations since one of the family had actually produced one though, which probably accounted for why his mother had even married his father. Not to say his father wasn’t a guy worth marrying. He was sure he probably had been when it had happened. It just meant that the chances of a dragon coming of that union lowered even more than they’d already been.

He blamed the fact that Dragons could change forms for this situation. At one point, hundreds of years ago, dragons had been relatively common, flying free in the skies and handling the human populace as governors and the like. Then someone got greedy, and someone else got _smart,_ and it resulted in a clash that sent most of the dragon population in Europe underground for a century disguised as humans. 

It had been a disaster and led to people marrying non-dragons, because you couldn’t just _ask_ when you were trying to avoid being murdered for your race, and with other bloodlines fleeing to parts of the world where they were, if not less obvious, at least more welcome. Every continent had a different kind of dragon, after all, and Europe had had most of the fliers.

After the mess in the 1500s though, those flighted bloodlines were landlocked, the children either being unable to manifest their scaled forms, or worse, them being incomplete, stuck in some halfway place between human and dragon without a wing or claw in sight. 

They’d become the undesirables to both races, often hiding as human and having more children with even further diluted blood. 

And it had spread from country to country, that practice. Become common, until full-fledged dragons were nearly unheard of come 1900. 

Which is when the first Carbonells trickled over to America, looking for better opportunities in a land that whispered of still having dragons. Smaller, flightless dragons, yes, but still dragons. Fire breathing ones even! Most other continents didn’t have those, the Carbonells being the only ones in Europe who had the skill. Ice, acid? Much more common.

Thus, no one expected Tony to become a Stark Dragon.

And he hadn’t. He hadn’t even _tried,_ because his mother hadn’t bothered to mention it to him until he was fifteen and still hadn’t managed to switch on accident somehow. It made heading off to college a whole lot easier, running on that anger at being uninformed.

Having dragon blood was _special_ and he wasn’t thrilled no one had told him that he was so privileged. 

So he went to school, and things happened in his life that went about as one would expect. Really, the only tendency that he showed of a dragon was his sheer possessiveness. At least, that was the case right up until Obadiah got it in his head that he knew best and decided to deal with the ‘problem’ that had sprung up in the form of Tony’s sharpness, and that he wasn’t starting to flag like most people of his age and habits _should_ be.

Which was another clue that something was not the same as others had been led to think.

Afghanistan is what cracked the whole thing wide open, though. 

Dragons, you see, Tony had always been led to believe were _big._ That was a lie though, a mistake of distance and exaggerated historical art. Dragons really weren’t that much bigger than people. Configured differently, certainly, but ultimately _just the same size._

Which really only added to his freaking out when he came to with metal in his chest and the gleam of golden scale out of the corner of his eye. His hands were still articulated for delicate work, just clawed as he held them over his head, now with a pointed face and with his tongue in a configuration that would make speaking a royal _bitch._

Oh, and there was the wings too, and the fact his spine bent in completely different ways than he was used to. In all there were _several_ things different, like his _whole everything,_ but he managed to not freak out entirely, to get himself back to a human shape, somehow, without displacing the thing in his chest that was, actually, the last thing to garner his attention.

And not a moment too soon either, because he doubted his captors would have hesitated to add scale plucking to the agenda if they’d known.

Of course, after that, Tony was deeply displeased to find he couldn’t get back to his dragon self until well after he returned home, which accounted for his stint with the armor, and led to the mess with Obadiah…

But that didn’t mean that the moment he figured it all out that he didn’t immediately decide it would be his private secret. 

For a little while anyway. Just until he knew how everything _worked._

And how to make the reactor less painful when he flipped back and forth, because that, at least, still kept the shrapnel away no matter what he looked like, thank god.

[Tony's dragon form.](https://www.deviantart.com/skeren/art/Dragon-Tony-775820420)


	29. Steampunk Mafia AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the Mafia. With steampunk. And airships.

**It’s still just business.**

There was a point when Tony had just been a businessman, albeit an innovative one. In fact, there was a point that he had been, astoundingly, mostly oblivious to the rise of the mafia situation in the city he originally started out in. It hadn’t been a thing he was paying close attention to, because sure, he was in the arms business at the time, but he was all above-board.

It didn’t touch him.

And then, one day, his assistant, who had always been punctual if incredibly curious about everything, stopped coming to work, and he met the only lady detective he imagined had ever existed in the modern day. And she, in turn, discovered that Obadiah had not only gotten him involved in the mafia situation, but that he was personally responsible for both the abduction of his Pepper, who had the pen name of Viola Rescue which had something to do with why she’d been _stolen,_ and the death of his parents in that fire two years before.

Tony had taken it… poorly.

He’d also just _taken it._

Which had been interesting, and had been how he’d met Bruce, who had sort of not quite rescued Pepper, who had apparently had a self-rescue somewhat in the works before he’d arrived. It was only after the fact that Tony found out that the pair had met once before when she’d been doing an article on the man’s breakthroughs prior to becoming his assistant. She’d seemed charmed by the manner of the reintroduction, which was unexpected but _good,_ as it kept her distracted from how everything went down on Tony’s side of things. 

His injuries hadn’t exactly been something to scoff at, and had kicked his innovative side into something… creative.

It was after this that Tony set out to completely take over, or destroy, everything that Obadiah had built for himself, with Pepper and his side and Bruce trailing behind them both like a particularly terrifying firebug. That was when Tony had started building his first airship, as well as a few of his more… unique gadgets.

After the initial sweep had come the others. Rhodey and Sam were a unit deal, fleeing a particularly unpleasant bit of bigotry, and behind them, from another corner entirely, was the Brooklyn group. Trio? Either way, they’d come in because of Sam putting in a good word, so that was one beautiful woman and two brilliant men to the party. Though why two Brooklyn boys had possession of a terrifying English woman he never quite dared ask.

She didn’t try very hard to hide her guns.

It was, apparently, enough of a gathering that Natasha, that detective who had done so right by him, decided to throw her inside men his way, which got him Coulson, with the police, and Clint, another shooter who Tony took great joy in outfitting with his weapon of choice, to the family. Between him and Bucky, they never had a trouble, that was for sure.

Last, though, was the brothers. Loki and Thor, rolling in from the south and outside the city altogether, one with the wind still in his hair from the odd little airplane he’d stolen to get them to where Tony had been landed at the time, and it showed. They weren’t prepared, not even slightly, but a group like theirs was pretty good about keeping bystanders out of their business. Mostly. 

Unfortunately, their daddy was an arms dealer of another stripe, to say nothing of another city entirely, and Tony found himself having to deal with _that_ mess and somehow ending up with the brothers in the process. And their people. But at least the man had stopped _selling_ in his city, rather, cities at that point, so that was something decent into a bad mess.

So, all in all, while there was a lot of blood, death, and tears by the time Tony was 30, he’d taken over his home city and a few others along the coast. He just wished that the death part had been somewhere _else,_ that the blood had been less _his_ , and that the tears hadn’t somehow ended up being Pepper’s every damn time. With his business, that also meant that he was, by gods, going to stay on top and keep the arms out because bystanders getting caught in the middle of everything was _not okay._

It really was only a matter of time before something went wrong. Or rather, before it got _personal_ because of the new exploits he’d been doing.

You couldn’t treat your people like family without your enemies taking notice. It’s just a matter of if your enemies were stupid enough to think that was a weakness that wouldn’t be revenged. Viciously. Especially when you had taken to traveling from place to place and not everyone happened to go with you every time you did.

Which might be how the family ended up with the nickname of the Avengers in the wake of the mess that left Tony’s family home burning in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve.

* * *

**Mafia+Airships=Win**

So like for a while I’ve been frowning at my mafia au because it seemed… off. I dunno, too humdrum?

Well, now it’s a steampunk fantasy mafia AU where Tony builds Airships and fantastical tech in the wake of finding out that Obadiah was selling his weaponry on the streets and building ties with a mafia family that was doing more damage than anything in Tony’s home city.

Basically, things went very badly for Obadiah in the wake of all that and Tony took over the entire coast because it was the best way he could keep the area safe after _that_ clusterfuck. But he kind of ended up a mafia boss in the process, and sure, airships, and clockwork _badassery,_ but also mafia family dynamics and ruthless variations of the characters.

Perf.


	30. Vampire AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is a vampire. And was born in 1910. Oh, and nobody has a clue.

**Sunlight and Silver**

So, vampires. Everyone has a vampire AU, and I’m certainly no exception. I just happen to have created my own, very uniquely me, variation of the things. And I’ve figured out how to apply it to Tony.

The first point to mention is how Vampires work. There are two kinds, the Born and the Made. The Made are what spring to mind when people think of vampire stories, really. They don’t age, they burn in the sunlight, they can’t have children, and they actually have to die to get that way. Of course, there’s more to it than that. The very act of turning someone is a fifty-fifty chance at best, is highly traumatic as one has to either be stabbed in the heart with a needle (something which has only come about in modern times) or have their chest cracked open so that blood can be dripped directly onto their heart. Either way, it’s not pretty, it’s not storybook perfect, and of that half, only half of _those_ even come up with a chance of ever being sane again. And that’s after coming up out of a berserker mode that at least a third of the time kills the person who turned them.

Suffice to say, those who are Born are a little different than _those_ types. That is not to say it’s all sunshine and roses. They’re light sensitive, and they’re also, to their eternal misfortune, long-lived. People truly tend to underestimate what this means. Born vampires are practically helpless the first couple years of life, take another forty-odd years to get to what humans might see as the age of ten years old, and another few decades after that to fight their way to full maturity. A century from birth to adulthood, essentially, which is an understandable hazard given that it means they breed slowly. Unfortunately, this has a dual failing as Made Vampires often require the blood of a Born (or one who is older and stable from doing so themselves) to become truly stable. It’s led to the Born Vampires being nearly extinct as the various lines have been hunted down over the centuries.

The genes being recessive doesn’t help. If they interbreed with humans the chances of the kid coming out vampire is incredibly low. Of course, this means that kids who manifest with full vampiric traits pop up from time to time in ‘fully’ human lines. Usually, these children die, as the first year or two these infants can only ingest blood, with their bodies unable to process anything else like their older counterparts (though it should be noted that no vampire will ever be able to do solids without being ill, and the Made never leave this stage at all) and thus usually perishing within a month or so.

So, onto our story.

Howard, oddball that he was, was blessed with a particularly long life for a human and had none of the benefits other than that (no enhanced healing, only slightly buffered aging, human tier strength, speed, and senses, to say nothing of the utter lack of magic) but also none of the other drawbacks (no purely liquid diet, no sensitivity to silver, no need to avoid the sun). He also happened to be a bit older than he bothered to tell people. Still a native of the United States, he was actually born in 1884 in this particular timeline, and even happened to get married to a lovely woman he met in New York as he tried to start finding his way through the minefield of old money to try to make a life for them. 

And this is where Tony comes in. 

He was born, unlike his father, with a completely undiluted form of vampirism. He was also born in 1910, and his father had no idea what to do. Tony, fortunate as he was, had a parent that figured him out quick enough, but his mother couldn’t handle it and ended up bailing fairly quickly, leaving Howard to have to find a caretaker for this seemingly unaging child when he was dragged off to war the first time for WWI, and then went more willingly the second time, in WWII. 

Of course, the second go-around had Tony old enough to be getting into things, and by then Howard had seen just how quickly the boy healed from his mishaps, so when the Supersoldier program came calling, Howard knew _exactly_ what he was looking at. Somehow, Erskine had found a way to rouse the latent genes for Born vampirism. That the process was started by HYDRA was utterly beside the point to him, because here Howard saw a way to make sense of his child.

One that didn’t seem like a fantasy story.

But then, things don’t have a way of working out, and Steve was the only one, an unreplicable experiment, if one that Howard was proud to be a part of the making of. He never talked about Tony, not at the time, as he, while not a particularly attentive or loving parent by any means, was at least protective enough to keep him hidden and out of sight until it might be _safer._ And, if Howard put it around like his own life that placed him as dramatically older than Steve, before finally getting a foothold in business after the depression, then that just made sense to him too.

Tony never did understand it. After all, his dad still _aged_ mostly properly. 

But ultimately, it was Ana Jarvis who was Tony’s saving grace, having practically tripped over the child one day shortly after Edwin brought her home with him from Hungary and instantly understanding what the boy _was._ It was a balm to her when events conspired to keep her from having any children of her own, and by the time Maria came around, vibrant and full of life, Tony was finally creeping into the starting stages of a very _long_ stretch as a teenager.

Still, he loved her, and she was good to him, even if she had no idea what he _was,_ not really. She’d led him through the stages of going from a sheltered hidden child with limited access to the outside world to being in the public eye as a ‘prodigy’ in 1985 so he could go to college and finally be out in the world. Her death was a heavy blow, especially in the wake of having lost both the Jarvises in the years just prior. Losing his dad wasn’t a picnic either, of course, but that was different, and he was, all told, still _young_ for what he was. 

Come the turn of the century, Tony might have hit maturity, but there were a lot of theories around that his dad had dosed him with something along the lines of the serum at some point because of how young he still looked. The beard helped, yes, but only so much. Ultimately, however, it seemed to not make _that_ much of a difference, not to the way things unfolded in the MCU at least, give or take a few things.

Like the fact that HYDRA was trying to recreate Born vampires so they could raise them up in power and steal the abilities they manifested for their clan of Made vampires.

But other than that? Totally on track with the MCU. Really. Mostly. Just with Vampires.


	31. Kidnapped Tony AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Tony was kidnapped at 24 he never escaped.

**So it really did end up worse.**

Tony’s life was on the right track for a long time. Things were normal for him, even if not always happy. His parents died, he took over the company, and he made good contacts in the military.

Then he turned twenty-four and went to one too many parties. He was drugged, a contact based toxin that knocked him out almost immediately. 

Tony Stark was never seen in public ever again.

He was declared dead a year after his abduction in Europe, even though no trace of a body was found. Obadiah Stane pushed for the motion after four months, and the remaining time was needed to process all paperwork and leave the option for Tony to show back up. He, of course, did not, nor did any evidence of life. Thus, by twenty-five, the man named Tony Stark no longer existed to the public at all, mourned as a man who died far too soon at the height of his potential.

But that didn’t mean he was _dead._

Most of that first year is a total haze to him, lost to drugs and horror that numbed him to everything going on, but after that, something changed in their approach, and the experiments started. And then they didn’t stop.

By the time he escaped late into his thirties, he didn’t look like he’d really aged at all, his skin had the faint glimmer of metal when sunlight hit his skin where the veins showed, and he’d picked up a couple of languages he hadn’t known going in.

He was still sharp, and smart, and so _very_ clever.

The wonder of knowing something just to know it had been ripped out of him though. The joy of science was so many ashes in his fingers because of over a decade of self-sabotage and refusal to obediently lend his mind to the cause unless his own life was on the line. 

Sometimes even when it was. 

He knew he was different than when he’d gone in, and that he probably had nowhere to go. Time was broken in there, twisted up and hard to follow in a straight line between procedures, but he knew it was long enough that anything that had once been his was probably long out of reach. It made the world a strange, hostile place when he emerged somewhere in fucking _Asia._

It made for a quick and dirty acquisition of a few languages as he kept on the move, handily fucking up anyone who found him from the people who made up his pursuit, all the while trying to figure out how to block or break down the signal of the nanites that probably made up more of his insides than his insides did these days. 

But really, he had no idea what to do with himself from there. The world, after all, was a very different place without Tony Stark having been in it.

* * *

Anyone who picks this up is welcome to use or designate the unnamed group (it can be HYDRA, AIM, something else entirely, whatever works for you) or have SHIELD come a calling because they located him, or anyone else really. 

He’ll keep on the move, and his escape is set around late 2006/early 2007, so anytime after that works for interacting with storline in whatever country you find him in. He starts off in Mongolia. 

Due to the physical tampering, in direct light his skin tends to glimmer due to the high concentration of metal in his blood, and he doesn’t look like he’s aged much past the time he went missing.


	32. Time Lord Tony AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Tony had escaped Gallifrey before the Doctor made that no longer an option. He has no idea. At first.

**Time Lord Tony**

Yes, I have one of these. I’ve had one of these for months but I never got around to slapping down an AU post about it. Clearly, today is that day. I’m feeling the AU vibe.

Tony Stark was not born on Earth. No, he was created on Gallifrey as a she and swiftly abandoned her name for the title of The Mechanic after growing up on stories of the Doctor during the war, which was the only thing she’d ever known of the world. It didn’t exactly endear her to what she was being taught, and the fact that her teachers were constantly trying to curb her back toward studies that would benefit the war didn’t help either. She wanted to explore the universe, and travel, and do things that weren’t staying on the planet to constantly fight and possibly die over and over again for a war that had begun long before she’d ever existed. 

So, she waited, patient as she all the knowledge of the greater universe as she could under the increasingly sharp eye being kept on her because of how much she exhausted her teachers by her drive to learn things that were not currently _useful_ to be learned. Ultimately, it was a slip in this attention that led to her bolting the moment she was left unattended long enough at age 87, not quite even considered an adult at all, with one of the war TARDISes and fled to the Earth that tended to feature often in any stories she’d ever heard about the Doctor.

She’d be safe there, if only because of the Time Lord’s perseverance in keeping the planet intact. Of course, she couldn’t stay what she was, but she’d known that, planned for that, and spent time studying her options. 

It led her to the Starks, ultimately, and she used herself as an intermediary of sorts to set up several things for a swift adoption, taking care that they _would_ treat a child brought into their care as their own. From there, she almost entirely took apart her TARDIS, tucking pieces here and there, carefully hidden and protected, undetectable, with the chameleon arch being the last thing to go.

She triggered off her first regeneration before using it, focusing hard on the Stark couple, on how to be convincing as _theirs_ so no one ever questioned it, not even her, and how to get as much distance from her current self as possible to better hide.

This was how Tony Stark was created as a four-year-old, holding a watch that turned into the lone bit of superstition he ever seemed to believe in as he wandered memoryless straight into the arms of the adults that had been waiting for the child that they had been told would be meeting them there. The Starks hadn’t anticipated, in spite of the young woman’s assurances, that the child would look enough like them to be convincing, and even blood tests proved that they were the parents.

In the years that followed, the watch became Tony’s ever-present charm, supposedly filled with luck that opening it would lose, and it was something rarely seen or known about because as he grew up it just existed in his radius, important but not important enough. His parents didn’t tell him how they came to have him, because he clearly didn’t _know,_ didn’t remember what brought him to them, and they were just happy to finally manage to have a child when it came down to it.

Maria had been declared unable over a decade previous, so ultimately, he’d been a blessing to the couple. They’d planned to tell him of his adopted status after he was old enough, but they died before that time ever came, leaving him in the dark about his heritage. Especially given that no amount of bloodwork would ever prove he was anything but theirs.

That didn’t mean some things didn’t shine through, of course, and Tony completely without thought ended up storing most of the consciousness of his TARDIS in Dum-E, with bits and pieces being given out to his other AIs without him really _realizing_ it.

And for the most part, everything else in Tony’s life stayed the same, for better or worse. Until, of course, someone bothered to question the watch hard enough and finally got him to open it.


	33. Magical World AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein there's a glimpse at Hogwarts Tony before I scream 'got your nose' and inundate you with Ilvermorny and Magical America headcanons instead.

**Harry Potter AU- Two Versions**  
 **Version One - Brit Tony** (only seen in this section)

**NAME:** Anthony Edward Stark  
 **NATIONALITY:** British  
 **ETHNICITY:** Italian  
 **SPECIES:** Human (MOSTLY) His grandfather on his mother’s side was a Centaur and no one told him until he was accidentally turned into one and it was unfixable.  
 **BLOOD:** Halfblood, his dad is Muggleborn  
 **SIGN:** Gemini  
 **SPECIAL ABILITIES?** Learned from his dad how to make tech reliably magic friendly. Excellent flier.  
 **SCHOOL:** Hogwarts  
 **HOUSE:** Ravenclaw  
 **WAND:** Ebony, Dragon Heartstring, 11 and ½ inches, exceptionally springy  
 **FAMILIAR:** Owl, Butterfingers  
 **PATRONUS:** European Lynx  
 **ANIMAGUS?:** No  
 **QUIDDITCH?:** Beater  
 **BEST 3 CLASSES:** Transfiguration, Arithmancy, Potions  
 **WORST 3 CLASSES:** Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures, Muggle Studies (Horrible habit of correcting the teacher)

**Version Two - New Yorker as per Normal, complete with Iron Man and the version henceforth**

**NAME:** Anthony Edward Stark  
 **NATIONALITY:** American  
 **ETHNICITY:** Jewish/Italian  
 **SPECIES:** Human  
 **BLOOD:** Dad is _still_ a no-maj-born first-gen, so still halfblood, but mom is fully non-magic  
 **SIGN:** Gemini  
 **SPECIAL ABILITIES?:** Still an excellent flier, still can modify tech, much to the GREAT JOY of magic users in the US in later years.  
 **SCHOOL:** Ilvermorny - He did correspondence courses with MIT while attending and used breaks at Ilvermorny to take exams and turn in projects. When he had free days that permitted him off campus opportunities, basically.  
 **HOUSE:** Thunderbird  
 **WAND:** Walnut, Thunderbird tail feather, 12 and ¾ inches, Flexible  
 **PATRONUS:** Puma  
 **ANIMAGUS?:** Yes, Also Puma  
 **QUIDDITCH?:** No  
 **BEST 3 CLASSES:** Arithmancy, Magical Theory, Alchemy  
 **WORST 3 CLASSES:** Herbology, Creatures Handling, Apparition

* * *

**The American Cast**

Okay, so the above meme outlining Tony at Hogwarts and Tony in the MCU proper while being magical. I’d like to expand on that now. I have _ideas._ Mind, anyone who wants to play in this verse can change any of these points to suit their muse, but I like the idea of all these people being related to it and just never mentioning it to each other for the longest time.

Tony clearly went to Ilvermony, this just makes sense if he also went to MIT and did the whole magical education schtick. Now, imagine for a moment if _all_ the human Avengers were in some way related to the magical world, and that the serum only ever worked properly at _all_ on people who had magic in the first place.

Bruce’s dad didn’t let Bruce go even though he was magical because of his experiments, and instead, part of why the Hulk came out as he did was that his magic lent a degree of stable sentience to the transformation that wouldn’t have been there without it. After the Hulk he ends up grateful he never got to train his magic because what little he’d figured out how to do wandlessly stops working entirely.

Natasha, after the Red Room, actually took a turn through Durmstang, starting three years late, but there they’re actually used to things like that happening because so many parents got paranoid after Grindelwald that they always make sure that their kids know everything they need to know to survive the magical world at that school. Sometimes the parents never send their kids at all, even when offered scholarships, depending on which country the student was from.

Clint is someone who should have gone to Ilvermony but didn’t, mainly because of his moving around as a kid made him damn near impossible to pin down to get a letter to, let alone a representative. Whether or not he ever got proper training when he was older is debatable, but he does use his bow as a focus and there’s a reason he favors this one specific one of his.

Steve was a child of a magical. In fact, the only reason his ailments weren’t worse when he was a kid was because of the magical blood from his dad’s side, which his mom knew about but hadn’t ever told her son about. Why share about a world he wouldn’t be allowed into if she couldn’t go either? After the serum, his magical abilities suddenly _worked,_ having been enhanced with the rest of him, but no one realized this was the case and he channeled it all inwardly, which redoubled his physical abilities and how fast his mind moved because it needed to go _somewhere._

Bucky actually ended up attending Ilvermony himself, though he didn’t go the full seven years, instead only going until he was old enough that he could leave and still do the magic thing outside class so that he’d be able to help his family when he got back to New York. A little magic to do repairs went a long way toward saving money for his sisters to be able to have what they needed, and his family overall profited from sending him. When the war came, and he went, he left with the assurance that his little sister would be safe at school herself.

Rhodey never attended Ilvermony, but he did know about it, Tony having explained to him at length about it, only to get a simple ‘yeah I’ve heard of it’ because Rhodey’s little sister was a magical, even if Rhodey himself wasn’t. He figured it was fair trade because she was deaf that she got something special. It did smooth the way for Rhodey making sure Tony always had everything he needed sorted out for MIT when he had to be at his other school though.

Sam is another one who went to Ilvermony, though he went straight from there to college, having kept up with his high school classes on his mom’s insistence so that he didn’t fall behind. When he decided to be a pararescue, that insistence paid off, and his magical training is why their rate of success was so high compared to most of the teams.

Pepper was a second generation latent (squib) before she got nailed with Extremis, and that’s why she lived. Her magic wasn’t unlocked, but it _was_ why she survived in the first place. It’s also why her body acclimated so quickly, since her lack of active magic didn’t interfere in the process by fighting and making her more explodey.

On the flip side of the situation was Killian who was a latent who _did_ know about the magical world and had been barred entry. It only added to his bitterness.

The Maximoffs actually had a creature inheritance rather than being of wizarding stock, and while a magical creature inheritance, it wasn’t active enough to get them invited to any of the major schools. The application of the Mind gem unlocked this, though far more intensely in Wanda than in Pietro. 

Scott’s daughter is actually magical, as is her mother. Scott _does_ know about the magical world however because of this. He just has no particular reason to try to visit without his daughter.

The entire Wakanda panther situation is known about in the Magical world and is respected and left alone as its own _thing._ They were not more social on the magical side of things than they were on the non-magical side of things since they have very little separation of the two in their country.

* * *

**Society and Creature Details**

Okay, so because of how little there is about modern American Wizarding culture… I have made up things. I have made up a _lot of things._ So these are all things that apply to my Wizard Tony, alright folks? Have a dump of my personal Wizarding headcanons.

* * *

Howard hid out on the non-magical side of the world the moment he got out of school because of the intense segregation between the magical and no-maj population in the European descended wizard areas. In other words, places like New York and the like. He pretended he wasn’t magical, mostly.

He is, however, responsible for the gremlins of the Stark line, given he _started that._

* * *

**Gremlins:** Known among most of the wizarding populace as a non-magical invention, these little beings came to exist all over the world in small numbers shortly before WWII. Many human magicals don’t believe they exist, as they tend to be about as easy to spot when they don’t want to be as house elves.

Howard, having heard the story and not realizing it came from the non-magical literature side of things, ended up spending considerable effort to catch one, and that had an impact on their form. Instead of being purely magic, they acquired a shape, and Howard taught Tony how to communicate with them when he was a kid. 

Tony made deals with the Gremlins so all Stark tech has them, but their energy eating habits are compensated for via carefully created runes which sift the electricity in the technology through a magic filter. This way, the gremlins don’t just kill the tech by eating everything that runs it in one go, and in this way they protect the device from other malfunctions.

He accidentally sicced a group of Gremlins on Hammer when he was in his early twenties in a fit of pique and has since given up on trying to get them to leave the company alone because they like it over there.

* * *

Americans have a far more cordial relationship with Gnomes due to the vast farming culture, and the little beings are often invited to live in fallow fields to replenish the magic and nutrients in them on a rotation rather than being driven off. 

Similarly, Wood nymphs are incredibly common in fruit orchards.

* * *

Bog Lights, also known as Bog Fairies and not to be confused with the normal species of Fairy modern wizards are familiar with, are rather rare in Europe due to the little beings being used in many time turner experiments early in their creation before the standard charms that make them were stabilized. Confined to one type of magical glowing flower that grows at the edge of swampland for their reproduction cycle, it was found to be incredibly easy for wizards to catch these creatures. Their wings were used to create a kind of ‘fairy dust’ that was used in early time turners in an attempt to replicate their ability to warp time in their immediate vicinity and has since led to the European variation of the glowing species of ‘fairy’ being run nearly into extinction.

The American species of this creature, known instead by the name of Bog Sprites rather than fairies when not called by their proper name, are not confined to one type of flower as their European counterparts, however, they are still typically only found in swampy areas. Just as all others of their species, regardless of origin, they tend to glow. Both types, be they European or North American, are known for leading humans astray and drowning them in the swamps they call home.

Given that both types of Bog Light have time warping capabilities, Howard took note of the matter while overseas during WWII and made notes. Upon discovering these notes and learning of ‘Time Turners’, Tony ended up figuring out how to sweet talk them into giving him dust (his perception of them being fairies admittedly colored by Peter Pan) which he then learned to be _extremely_ effective in achieving what in the original Time Turner experiments was a failure. He used the item to satisfy requirements for his Enchantment Mastery.

* * *

Tony went out of his way in the wake of leaving MIT to get Masteries in Arithmancy, Runes, Warding, Enchanting, and Alchemy. He got them in that order given the first two weighed heavily toward cutting time for the second pair due to interrelated studies. The Alchemy Mastery was something he got simply because someone told him it was outdated and useless.

He’s since found a use for it. 

Masteries are achieved by doing extended study under a Master of the craft and making an innovation within the field while apprenticed.

* * *

Due to how much later Ilvermorny was in being created as compared to the other ten of the Eleven Official Schools recognized by the ICW, North America actually has a great many types of magic and schools that aren’t really admitted as being ‘proper schooling’ by the ICW run Education Board. 

These include the Magical Tribes that reclused themselves from the world during the time of Columbus and ‘vanished’ from non-magical perception, the Voodoo using people of New Orleans, and many others that bridge the gaps between. Many of these schools are not admitted to being ‘adequate’ because of the fact that wand magic is far from their primary focus.

Tribal magic is heavy in rituals, and what is known as animagus training in the European lexicon is fairly commonly taught to small children so they can grow up and be a shapeshifter without hardships. Those who do well with this are often sent upon completing adult rights to guide and watch over those without magic as spirit guides, and so that they can easily collect and bring home any first generation magicals in those tribes without fuss.

Voodoo, on the other hand, is a magical branch that is heavy in what many in Europe view as necromantic rites, though such things are very rarely ever used for malice, and the ritual work is often incredibly effective. 

There are other types of magic that have been important with the immigrants bearing them as well, and these are not uncommon to see either, such as those based in music and art.

Normal Wand Magic is, of course, becoming increasingly common, however, due to the effectiveness of schools like Ilvermorny in recruiting students.

* * *

American Wizards show what Europeans often consider to be an alarming lack of focus. Where overseas it’s often considered normal for a Wizard to put all their focus in one field to the exclusion of all others, in the vastness of the North American continent this is simply impractical. While magical travel often shortens the time it takes to move from point to point, people would by and large rather do what is most convenient instead.

This has led to things such as household and beauty charms being taught in schools, transfiguration being widely used for spot fixes, and many whose hobbies and favored jobs overlap their non-magical friends’ learning magic far outside their original specializations. The more isolated a wizard is on this continent, the more likely they are to have a multitasking habit.

Also, due to the inability to nationally monitor as Europe has without issues cropping up of an entirely different nature, charms for monitoring under-age magic use are only placed on wands. Because of this, wandless magic is often taught and _encouraged_ in magical families to avoid stagnation of gifts. Movies such as Star Wars have only given inspiration in this field for even those born from the non-magical due to their popularity in the States and while not commonly taught, it’s considered acceptable to use Wandless Magics around the non-magical as long as you don’t do anything _too_ obvious.

* * *

Ilvermorny is often viewed, in America, as the school for extreme students. Usually, only those magical students who are very rich, and thus would be at boarding school anyway, or those who are in the system as orphans (also in this category are often the very poor) and thus have nowhere better to go, are to be found in attendance in Ilvermorny’s halls. 

Instead, there are many day schools that are treated as ‘homeschooling’ by the Education Board that take in students all over the country for those of the middle class that makes up the majority. Much like the various post-primary schooling of 11-17 years that Trade Schools offer, the Day Schools are all of varying quality, though it is widely accepted that if you have non-traditional talents or lower power levels that this is likely the place for you.

More than a few of these Day Schools and Trade Schools in America take in those who would be deemed as ‘magical beings’ and ‘squibs’ in other parts of the world, as their limitations are catered to.

* * *

It should be noted that Wizarding folk born on American soil will have extended lifespans due to the cultivation of the Tribes (both Magical and non) of the land before the United States was created in the late 1700s. Since then the spaces that give health boosts have become a bit less common, but they are thankfully still very present, and wild places still exist.

There are many tribal elders who refuse to have their ages documented, though it’s rumored that one of the old Toltec tribes has elders that surpass the old record for age among their spirit council.

* * *

Tony, having been a leader in non-magical technology because of his dad, is widely regarded as a first-gen wizard in America, in spite of his corrections to the contrary, and outside the borders of the US isn’t known for being magical at all. He finds this quite amusing, given that he’s not unaware of how strict the laws were in his dad’s time about mixing magicals with non-magicals, but is unaware that it’s a deliberate movement on behalf of the American magicals to protect him from those overseas.

The reason for this is because, due to his former business, he went out of his way to bring the community in touch with their non-magical counterparts and in turn kept them safe from detection even when their European cousins started to struggle due to their own stubbornness. This had the twofold result of creating the maginet, a magical only safe zone for discussing magic in parallel to the normal internet across the country and internationally, and making it safe for Magicals to regularly interact with non-magicals without the possible risk of exposure.

In the last thirty years, due to these efforts and innovations, the Magicals of America have caught up to, and surpassed, those of the Orient in terms of modern innovation.

* * *

Tony has been doing many many careful experiments using the frame (but not the actual program itself) that Extremis created to try to offer a method for magical couples otherwise incapable of having children to be able to do so. Far more successful, so far, is his work on unlocking the gene structure that blocks magic for squibs (also known now as latents, or magic locked) and makes them so wildly unhealthy.

It is this research and the funding to further it, more than any other, which has led to the protectiveness on Tony’s behalf among American Magicals.

* * *

Tony has a habit of poaching first-gen wizards and latents from places overseas into SI. This has the added bonus of depriving still-prejudiced communities of those they would mistreat while also attempting to revitalize said communities. Alternately, those first-gen wizards and latent folks put all their money into the non-magical side or move to America eventually. 

Regardless, Tony counts it as a win.

* * *

**Tony’s Magical Education**

Firstly, Tony spent his last few years concurrently enrolled in MIT, mostly with correspondence courses in his free time to get his degrees sorted out in the non-magical world.

Secondly, he could do this because he tested out of some of his _magical_ classes with the proper accreditation testing long enough back that he _had_ said free time. 

Of course, after some research into how schools worked in the Magical world as far as we know outside Britain, I ended up creating a whole system for how the Ilvermorny in my headcanon happened to work. Now, I shall share it with all of you because I’m ridiculous.

* * *

First years get all the core classes and are run through all the basic material and are expected to take up a club, as well as turn in a project of their choice by the end of the year for their teachers to look at. Those are usually explained to the kids as something they have to choose over the winter holidays.

In second year, kids pick more classes and are permitted to drop one core class for the year, though they will have to take it up again after a year off, and they can rotate classes like this until seventh year so that nobody gets overloaded.

On the other hand, students are expected to do more. They have to pick a sport, pick a game club, pick some other club, or band, but you’re expected to do something social.

I have no idea why this is the system my brain picked but I find it interesting kids are never really allowed to permanently drop any core classes until they take their final tests in those classes, which can be taken any year. You just have to take the mid levels, then the final exiting exams and you’re good. Passing, of course.

* * *

Tony, of course, tested out of Astronomy in first year, the mid levels halfway through the year, and the final tests at the end of the year. He did that for multiple courses, in fact, but he took every course they’d let him by the time he actually left the school and has a trunk filled with all his books that he still keeps. The only class he didn’t even attempt to go through quicker or skip a year in was Wandless Magic.

Please note that the year indicators are the years he _would_ have taken the classes if Tony Stark was a normal human being rather than _himself,_ as well as how those courses differ between Europe and American Standard in the modern age.

**Transfiguration** (1-7): Changing one thing to another and a study in how to make it permanent.   
**Charms** (1-7): Household spells, combative magic, and the first steps to learning how to enchant.   
**Potions** (1-7): Brewing and the magic of reshaping. Ilvermorny is known to have the best potions course in the world according to my research.  
 **History** (1-7): Magical Society, Non-magical society and how interactions of the two cultures shaped and changed both.   
**DADA** (2-7): A Study in what makes magic Dark, how to avoid addiction, practice safely, and avoid running afoul of international law.   
**Astronomy** (1-4): The stars and their interactions with the life of a magical being.  
 **Herbology** (1-7): Plants, their care and how to respect them.   
**Flight and other Transport** (2-5): Flying, Apparition, Floo, Portkeys, Driving, Creature Riding, Boating, and Shadowstepping (which tends to be something that looks more like how house elves ‘apparate’ than the wizarding method in Europe).   
**Arithmancy** (2-7): Maths and the art of telling the future.   
**Magical Culture and Diplomacy** (1-5): How to deal with magical beings, non-magicals, and magicals of other cultures. Also covers high holidays, their purpose and celebration.   
**Technology and Science** (1-5): Non-magical advancements, the dangers posed by non-magical weaponry, and non-magical sciences.   
**Divination and Scrying** (2-7): Covers all forms of fortune telling, how to locate people or things when in need, and the general uses of each method.   
**Ancient Runes and Lore** (2-7): Runes of Egyptian, Mayan, Norse and other traditions as well as the tales that shaped their formation.   
**Creature Handling** (2-7): The care for, study of, and defense from creatures both dangerous and non in the magical and non-magical world.   
**Wandless Magic** (1-7): Magical forms, how to shapeshift, and sensing magic beyond yourself.   
**Alchemy** (2-7): The art of turning one thing into another permanently, using integrated non-magical sciences to create something new, and the evolution of medicine.   
**Magical Theory** (1-7): The hows and whys of magic.   
**Ritual Magic** (2-7): Covers coven rituals, rain dances, ancient sacrificial magics (and the dos and don’ts therein), the differences made with willing and unwilling sacrifices (as well as why you don’t use unwilling sacrifices from any creature), and how to self heal when you’ve strained your magic.

* * *

Tony went out of his way to get Masteries (which in my variation are more than just becoming a teacher thank you, there _is_ secondary schooling for some subjects in the Magical world I noticed.) He has one in Arithmancy, Runes, Warding, Enchanting, and Alchemy. 

His Enchanting one he got in New Orleans with a Voodun master, so he’s definitely got a ritualistic slant to it. He got it by making a stable, but a distinctly different variant of Time Turner from those in Europe.

* * *

**Society Structure**

Money. To start with, American Magicals have this thing they do where all those coming in from overseas have to ‘convert to local magical currency’. Since Goblins don’t run the banks in the US, the foreigners just assume that of course, it’s a coin system like Galleons and whatnot.

In actuality, it’s an easy tourist spotting mechanism since it’s just normal non-magical coinage. In other words, foreign wizarding folk, especially from Europe, are just getting a mess of dollar coins and the like in their ‘conversion’ that can be spent pretty much anywhere in the US.

Let’s just say that people in East Coast magical areas tend to play ‘spot the tourist’.

* * *

In the above sections, I went over gnomes and nymphs and some folks along those lines, but they’re not the only magical beings that have a different lot of life over in the US. 

**Vampires:** These guys have the biggest community in the world in the United States since legislation has been passed that protect them from overt racism of any kind, and there are blood banks and protected underground areas owned by various clans.

**Werewolves:** Often taken in by the Tribes of Natives that teach their children shapeshifting, there are chunks of the National Forests that have been claimed for the use of the bigger packs, giving them running space where they’re no danger to anyone, and have their own schools for their kids there.

**Goblins:** Not being in charge of the banking system in the US, the population of Goblins is far smaller, and largely consists of outcasts and those that left the Goblin tribes of Europe for personal reasons. While more than a few work with money, there is a growing population of Goblin artisans.

**Merfolk:** Mostly found in the ocean areas, there is a decent merfolk population in the Great Lakes, and even a smaller subset of one at one of the Disney theme parks for the magical area in it.

**House Elves:** Treated far more like their brownie counterparts than their European cousins, House Elves work by contract. If there is to be a binding, then the Magical they’re bound to must first sign a contract as to what is, and isn’t, acceptable. It also ensures that _either_ party can break the bond, not just a wizard.

There are more, of course, but it can hardly all be encompassed here.

* * *

The Internet! Ah, the internet. It’s one of those things that, when first emerging, wasn’t approached very well by Magicals, but by the late 90s had started to become something of interest to Magicals all over the country. These days, there’s a whole subsection of the internet accessible to magicals all over the world. Any magical being can use a touch of magic on their device and get into this section of the internet.

Because of the anonymity, there are the typical problems, but it’s also a hot and heavy exchange of information that is banned in certain countries, or just unknown in others. America is, typically, rather loud there.

Because of this, some countries have tried to ban its use upon realizing it existed.

* * *

Wandless magic is the most common kind of magic used in the US. Due to the edge of secrecy and how integrated the magical and non-magicals are to one another in the modern day, wand use in public, or _possible_ public is largely frowned on. Wandless magic, while hardly approved of, is considered acceptable and _far_ more discreet to use around non-magicals of any degree of ‘in the know’. 

There are many things like tapping shelves in bookstores to get to magical sections, or doing similar to get from any other variety of non-magical to magical areas. Whipping out one’s wand to do this simply wouldn’t be practical, and it isn’t unknown for American Magicals to not even _carry_ such a thing.

* * *

With the large number of day-schools and the way magical beings and magical humans are all kinds of swirled together, it’s understandable that magical children are handled differently. Any First Generation magicals have their families approached at the first sign of noted magic so that their kids can start going to mixed day schools or otherwise be taken care of if their parents have issues.

Sadly, there are both up and downsides to this. More than one child has been removed from parents who took the news poorly and attempted to harm their children or exorcise them, though many of these children end up with magic friendly couples, that is sadly not always the case. On the other hand, the children being informed so early means that they end up going to school far more prepared and aren’t as crippled in the learning of certain magics that are best started young.

The reason that this was ever put into effect is because of the coming out of information on the abandoned magical child that Newt ended up interacting with as an Obscurus many years previous. Moves were made after that to prevent it from becoming a trend, if possible.

* * *

Due to Americans being unwilling to let anything lie, there are many new spells and potions from this part of the world on a somewhat regular basis, though unfortunately many of them never make it out of the country because of laws where they might end up going. Often, the integration of non-magical methods is enough to cause their offerings to be rejected.

* * *

There is a tendency, among American Magicals, to not even _try_ to go for their own fashion, though in an amusing turn, in the modern area due to cosplay and things like the SCA, more and more options have been opening up for more traditional dress that many magicals have come to appreciate. Some have embraced this, and others have simply stuck with modern trends instead. 

However, Magicals at conventions, be it their own or non-magical ones, have skyrocketed the costume industry in the magical realm, and let’s just say that they have the _most_ impressive wings.

* * *

**Vocabulary**

Just some quick terminology that I’ve established for how Tony as an American Modern Wizard uses language.

* * *

**No-maj:** Known as a muggle overseas, these people are instead simply those that have no magical capacity of any kind, including being unable to see warded spaces or create magical items. The terms Non-Magical and Baseline have started to become more popular in recent years than the old slang of this term, however.

**Latent/Magic-locked:** Known in Europe as Squibs, Latents in the US are those born of magical blood who can’t actively use magic outside their bodies. They can see magical spaces without help, create items with magical properties, and in general, simply have Latent magical genes that are still actively _present,_ merely weak.

**Magical:** Known in Europe to only encompass a Witch or Wizard typically, this term in the United States includes anyone or anything that can actively cast in the US. This means that a US Magical talking about Magicals might mean a Vampire or Werewolf as much as a purely human person who can use magic.

**First-Gen:** Equivalent to a European Muggleborn, this is anyone born from a set of Latent or No-maj parents.

**Half-Blood:** Someone known to have creature _and_ human lineage. Calling someone who has purely human blood is _incredibly_ confusing to American Magicals. Because what are they half of?

* * *

For Tony, the many derogatory meanings of the word squib make the word _quite_ the insult in his mind, and he’s far from the only person in America to believe so. 

Conversely, mudblood, while hardly a compliment, has a very different meaning in the US. Often used to refer to those who do heavily earth based magics due to having nymph or similar types of non-human blood, it’s actually very confusing to those unfamiliar with the culture overseas to see it aimed at first-gen magicals.

Pureblood, on the other hand, while a term that exists, is less about purity of magical lines and more about _species_ in America. After all, with all the magical creatures, it makes sense that those who are of pureblood stock take pride in it. However, pureblood can be applied to _any_ species in this context, and it’s not unheard of that non-human people use the term.


	34. Fruits Basket AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Avengers are afflicted with the Zodiac Curse.

**Fruits Basket AU**

After the curse was broken on the Sohma family, it migrated, hitting the Avengers and those attached to them late in 2016.

Coulson is the person the curse is eating away at
    Keep in mind the Avengers have no idea Coulson is alive so first hurdle.
Bruce is the Horse
    The Hulk doesn’t turn into the horse, but Bruce can choose stress over anger and be a pretty pony.
Natasha is the Rat
    Slight difficulties on missions now.
Clint is the Goat 
    Lucky man, distance go.
Tony is the Tiger 
    He will be modifying his armor so if he changes, it changes, damn it.
Bucky is the Snake 
    His arm is still attached to him, so modifications will be required for his snake form to not be even more freak-out worthy.
Steve is the Ox
    No more shield throwing but headbutts!
Sam is the Rooster
    Wing flight would be difficult, but if he lost a metal wing he’d still be good.
Thor is the Dragon
    He would actually be a PROPER DRAGON since he’s old enough to be past the seahorse stage. Probably not very big though.
Loki is the Monkey 
    He can still use his magic in this form so he’s probably good.
Pietro is the Rabbit
    Just. Fast rabbit is fast. And in this AU he’s not dead okay. He survived Ultron. 
Wanda is the Dog 
    She’s not yet figured out how to use magic to make the switcheroo happen but working on it.
Peter is the Pig
    And still has his spider abilities. Complex.
Scott is the Cat
    And just happy to be included.

Mind, the triggers are still more than minimal contact with the opposite sex and stress. NOW THINK A MOMENT. AVENGERS AND STRESS.

WILL THEY EVER BE HUMAN AGAIN OR JUST TALKING ANIMALS FOREVER?

Also, everyone can have contact with Vision without any adverse issues because he’s neither male nor female in the body.


	35. Twin AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two Tony Starks in one family.

**Two for the Price of One**

So, in a world where Howard and Maria had twins, things went a little cockeyed.

**1970**
  * _May 29th:_ Anthony Edward Stark and Antonio Gregory Stark born.
  * Antonio was a complete surprise.
**1976**
  * The twins decide it would be funny to only answer to Tony for a while. It sticks.
**1985**
  * The Twins head to MIT in the spring semester, Anthony for Mechanical Engineering and Robotics, Antonio for Chemical Engineering and Programming.
  * They meet Rhodey, who is horrified they drove up since neither had a license yet.
**1987**
  * _December 16:_ the Stark parents die.
  * Neither twin returns to classes after winter break, and Antonio goes on a bender with Anthony trailing after.
**1991**
  * The twins finally get their shit together to have Anthony take over the company.
  * They build JARVIS from notes made in Italy the year before.
  * Antonio makes inroads to starting to build a non-combat related part of R&D.
**1995**
  * The twins have a fight that has them part ways for the first time in their lives. They have no contact for two years.
  * Anthony stayed in Malibu to take care of the company, and Obadiah took advantage of his distress to encourage him to lean on alcohol.
  * Antonio fled to New York and found out about SHIELD in his dad’s files, getting in contact with them after finding out they were handling the Captain America expeditions as an ongoing thing. 
**1997**
  * Antonio comes home rejuvenated from his travels and visiting the Arctic, and Anthony looks like he’s about to keel over, his health got so bad.
  * Time is taken to repair things and Antonio wants to punch Obadiah in the head.
**1999**
  * Anthony hires Pepper as his assistant and they get along, even if it is a little shaky.
**2001**
  * _September 11:_ National catastrophe strikes and Anthony was running late to a function where it happened. Only his habit of not showing up on time stopped him from being inside the Twin Towers when the planes hit.
  * He ends up in a coma after being hit with falling debris.
  * Antonio is left in charge of the company while his brother is out.
**2002**
  * _June:_ Anthony finally wakes from his coma, but has no idea how to handle his brother anymore, putting distance between them as Antonio doesn’t seem to need him to take the company back over.
  * The situation is misunderstood.
**2003**
  * On hearing about the Hulk situation, Anthony bolts to go find him and help the guy out. Weekly check-ins are instituted.
**2007**
  * Anthony finally comes home, calmer and more level, to find his brother flailing at the Jericho project. He helps.
  * Obadiah convinces them that since it’s their mutual project, it should be treated as such.
**2008**
  * The twins go to Afghanistan.
  * Anthony comes back with shrapnel in his chest and an arc reactor.
  * Antonio comes home with burn scars up the left side of his body.
  * They close down the weapon division of the company.
  * Anthony delves into Iron Man.
  * Antonio rips into SHIELD to make sure they’ll never be caught off guard again.



* * *

**Twin Starks**

Antonio Gregory Stark was a surprise. Howard and Maria had planned for one baby, had picked out a name for both a boy and a girl, and that had been that. There had been debate on if a boy would get Anthony, as Howard preferred, or Antonio, which Maria did, but ultimately, they decided if it was Howard’s heir, then he got the final say on that front.

And he did. The firstborn of the twins was Anthony Edward Stark.

It was the surprise baby, smaller and hidden behind his larger brother in the ultrasounds, that got the name, Antonio, because Maria was a stubborn woman, and saw a chance to get her way. Thus, Antonio Gregory Stark.

Of course, then came the trouble of making up a whole other nursery for the child, and Howard quickly grew fed up with the process, leaving it to his wife and the Jarvis couple to take care of. That more or less was the trend that followed Antonio through life, as even if his brother had time for him, his father definitely didn’t seem to, and his mother, once she decided that the boys were on the right path, left them to it.

Neither boy got the dubious joy of being the ‘favorite’ exactly, but if one of them managed to ever attract the notice of their father, it was Anthony. Part of this was probably because he took more after the man and they communicated better. Antonio, unfortunately, took more after his mother in terms of temperament and never quite seemed to connect with his male parent, often suspecting deliberate favoritism in that quarter. On the upside, Antonio always was the target of Captain America stories since he was the twin who would actually sit still and listen to them, unlike his brother.

Anthony definitely seemed to draw the man’s irritation more often of the two. 

This, in turn, led to Anthony deliberately cutting in either time one of their parents was in a bad mood since it was clear to him that Antonio wasn’t exactly taking the high expectations the best, and if he was going to irritate them _anyway…_ It didn’t exactly help his brother’s confidence any, unfortunately.

One thing that should be noted is that the boys both answered to Tony. This was likely due to the fact that in spite of their father trying, in vain it should be noted, to refer to them by their middle names, it just plain never stuck. It helped that they were both just as smart as one another, and if they put in a little effort, could pass as each other as well.

In public, it was admittedly pretty funny to make the world doubt that Howard Stark actually had two sons.

Thus, Tony Stark was the public face of the twins, while in private they actually tended to be Anthony and Antonio, because they _weren’t_ just alike, no matter what they pretended sometimes.

Antonio trusted more, while Anthony was warier. Anthony was more impulsively reckless, and Antonio was the planner. Antonio was the quieter twin, while his brother constantly threw himself into the limelight.

So no, they weren’t the same, no matter how they looked, or that they both tended to chatter and deflect. They understood each other and were smart, brilliant, kids. Howard wanted to find out who was smarter, but they didn’t tell each other the results. They never wanted to be _sure_ if one was better than the other, and thus was more what their father would want.

It wouldn’t do them any favors.

So they grew up, keeping pace and sticking together. Anthony drifted deeper into weapon design, while Antonio grew ever more fixated on AIs. College was wonderful, and both became admittedly too attached to a certain airman to be. Anthony ended up getting the lion’s share of his time largely because he was the twin more likely to end up needing to be bailed out of trouble.

They collaborated their projects, even as their interests grew further apart, but it was the death of their parents that resolidified their united front.

Anthony took it hard. Antonio took it harder, and the next year was a mess as, for once, it was Anthony taking care of his younger brother and keeping him from being too much of a spectacle, kept him from making mistakes he’d regret in the morning. It was, frankly, the first time Antonio really understood the appeal of being in the spotlight like that, and it lit a fire under him to keep doing it.

But fires burn out, and there was a company to take care of.

Obadiah didn’t want to wait for one of them to step up, and Anthony didn’t have the patience to deal with the man’s bullshit. Antonio had the patience but did not want a weapon company. In all, it was a mess, and it took until they were nearly twenty-one to sort out, especially given the parties and general reputation crushing events that lay between the death of their parents and taking up the company.

The only good thing that really came out of those four years was a solid plan between the brothers, and JARVIS, who had been conceived of on a blackout bender in Italy, then created back in the US once they were coherent enough to decipher the notes that had been written before.

The plan turned out to be simple enough when it came to it. Anthony would design and be the public face of the company, and Antonio would help from the background, doing what he did best. And maybe taking over R&D enough to set off a whole new branch of the company that wasn’t weapon related at all.

He had to be careful, of course, given Obadiah got… cranky if there wasn’t a regular turn out to ‘show he was making something of his time’ but that was simple enough, and just as he helped Anthony with his projects, so too did Anthony offer help with his. It worked for them.

Or it did, up until they were twenty-five and there was a knockdown, drag-out fight that left them not on speaking terms for more than a year. This resulted in Antonio fleeing to New York while Anthony stayed in Malibu with the company.

That was the first time Antonio had really taken the time to go through his father’s workshop and his papers. His history. It was also the first time he’d really ever been away from his sibling, and it had, frankly, driven him deep into the files so that he didn’t feel the loss of it.

It’s what made him aware of the thing called SHIELD, and reminded him that his father’s quest for one _Steve Rogers_ had never actually been canceled. So he went.

It was, frankly, exactly what he needed. It was also _really cold_ out there. The people were rude, and rough, to say nothing of the horrible sense of humor that most of them had, but they looked after him because he was new, and not because he was one of the Tony Stark pair. They reminded him of his brother in the best ways, and honestly, he liked that.

Of course, they didn’t find anything.

When he came back, he didn’t lose touch with the people, the agents if he was being specific, that had gone out with him. And it was nice. _Really_ nice, to not have to share his friends for once. He could run around as Anton if he pleased, and no one would look at him sideways and wonder where his brother was.

It might have gone to his head, and it never actually occurred to him that Anthony would do worse with the separation than he would. That he’d blame himself for running him off. Suffice to say, he wasn’t thrilled at all when he finally returned to Malibu, nearly a full two years later, and found his brother passed out drunk on the floor at barely noon. He was a wreck.

And Antonio felt horrible. Still, he picked him up, dealt with the clinging and half incoherent apologies as his twin came around, and set about getting him to rights. Where Antonio had drowned himself in work, Anthony had turned to liquor.

It only took an hour to find out that Obadiah had put the first drink in his hand.

It took about two for him to stomp out the pure rage that the man had played on his brother’s vulnerability enough that Anthony wasn’t giving him wide-eyed stares for his ranting anymore. Worth it, though. It convinced Anthony that he still loved him, at the very least, which eased things considerably.

They didn’t spend all their time together after that but it was… better. They’d needed the distance, the _breathing room,_ because without it they’d been suffocating and hadn’t even noticed. But there wasn’t another bout of no communication like that. Sure, Antonio spent more time poking around the whole SHIELD thing, and they still went to events together, but they had their very different interests, or at least, he had his specific interests while Anthony shelved his real ones for the sake of the company.

He was never really sure. Not until years later, well after his brother picked up Pepper to make his life infinitely easier at least, and everything suddenly became horrible. In 2001, his brother had actually been too close to the bombings, only really saved from being dead because he’d been running late due to a project they’d been collaborating on, and he’d ended up in a coma for over a year due to getting clipped by falling debris.

It left Antonio squarely in charge of the family legacy, and too distressed to do anything but go where he was pointed, and design what he had to design. He didn’t immediately shove his brother back into running the place when he woke. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that to him, and he instead just told him to do what he _wanted_ to for a while.

Somehow, in 2003, this resulted in Anthony taking off for god knows where in a quest to track down a Dr. Bruce Banner when he vanished out of the public eye, only checking in weekly to reassure his twin wasn’t dead and giving absolutely zero details as to what that even meant.

When he finally reemerged in 2007, it was at the tail end of a project that Obadiah had put into Antonio’s head, and he’d really gotten invested in because he wanted, no, needed, to try and get the weapon side of the business aimed a different way.

His brother helped him get past the block he’d had on the final touches, things that Anthony had spent a lot longer invested in. Somehow, this resulted in Obadiah encouraging them to present it together.

Thus was how Afghanistan came around, and Anthony ended up with an arc reactor, while Antonio landed burn scars up the entirety of his left side, mottled from knee to shoulder.

But they made it out, and home, and Antonio finally learned that no, Anthony never really had liked weapons for the sake of weapons, and they shifted the direction of the company _together._

The Iron Man thing was a whole other issue, but that they definitely worked on together too. After the last several years, they really couldn’t afford to not watch each other’s backs again.


	36. Lady Toni AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha Antonia Stark, only child of Howard and Maria Stark.

**A Lady**

I mused on this one for a while, months even, as to how Tony would have changed as a woman in the MCU.

This has given me the full name of Natasha Antonia Stark. Depending on how much she likes you depends if she gives you leave to use _any_ part of her first name. She considers it more private and uses Toni in public circles since it’s more gender ambiguous and she always liked that. Close friends get leave to call her Tasha, though this habit drops off sharply after meeting our lovely Russian Natasha. 

As for the timeline itself. Her parents still would have died, her dad still would have been a jerk about her, though for slightly different reasons, and her mom would have tried, and unfortunately failed, to get more involved in her life. The woman never understood why her little girl wouldn’t sit still and get away from the tech for five minutes so that her mother could try and get her on socially acceptable dates.

She still progressed through her schooling just as quickly, one thing that Howard really approved of, and actually noticed enough to override her mother on when the woman wanted to keep her with her age peers. 

Obadiah got frustrated with her a whole lot faster, in large part because he didn’t like that she took over the company as soon as she was legally allowed instead of having the cushion of a few years. That she was still a party girl and shamelessly enjoyed partners of any gender just riled the man up more.

Unfortunately for him, his habits put her on edge, and by the time things came to a head, years ahead of when Afghanistan would have come around the first time, closer to early 2002 than 2008, and been about another weapon entirely. It would have been seen as a staggering blow in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, being so close on the heels of them, and it would have fueled the conflict to more of a frenzy that Obadiah would take advantage of.

Her time in the cave was no less horrific, and thankfully she was seen as a thing, not a woman, and came away unscathed aside from the shrapnel as she went about creating her first reactor. Yinsen, sadly, still managed to get himself in trouble, though in this timeline, he died knowing that his family was _safe,_ not dead.

When she came back, Obadiah was not well pleased and knew that the public would be much less understanding of the change of policy because the nation was still reeling. Thus, pulling out of government contracts whole cloth was not an option, and instead of announcing anything, she eroded Obadiah’s position enough that he attacked her later in the year after she’d managed to secure and get her first suit built. 

It was not pretty, but it was also quiet, and the man’s death was covered under a car crash before SHIELD could even catch wind of it. JARVIS helped, and it was one of his first major hacking jobs on her behalf. 

From there, she quietly started to sort out Iron Man’s situation and found it hilarious that people decided she must be male just because the suit didn't have prominent breasts or hips. She’s a slender woman and speed was more of value than bulk. She didn’t try to correct the public, and steadily closed down all military contracts she could get her hands on, switching what she could to defensive equipment and gear, as well as medical apparatuses. 

The program that Sam was involved in, because of this, got a lot more attention than previously, and Toni got involved, fixing a few defects in the initial design that were not otherwise caught. Riley did not survive, unfortunately, but his death was no longer due to crashing from the sky.

She became aware of the Palladium issue within a year of her return, and this time, there was no SHIELD hovering over her shoulder the way they had to her male counterpart. The solution was still found. Since it lived in her office, it was actually playing with the figures that lived in the expo model that made her notice the pattern, but the margin was much narrower than it had been for her male counterpart and the effects had almost become permanent. She’d put Pepper in her will to take her company, but she didn’t hand it over, being much more possessive of it due to her father’s resistance to letting her into it in the first place when she was young.

She became aware of the Hulk situation weeks after she resolved her own issues, much too late to do anything about it, but she started her own search, wanting to keep an eye on a brilliant contemporary if she could find him.

By 2008, she’d managed to finally alert SHIELD to her heroing status, had the nebulous joy of persistent babysitting by Coulson working on four years, closed down the weapon division of her company, and got total control of the situation without alarming the public or the board.

Then Hammer tried to get involved and it was just not pretty, though the Vanko situation was years out, at that point, and the man did not have the support he did in canon, leading to a much sloppier, and one-sided, situation. It was only after this happened that she even considered giving one of her suits to anyone else, given that the military finally tracked the source of them to her at long last, which was mostly due to someone asking her, flat out, if she knew who was in the suit.

She’d said yes, that was her, but she was just fine remaining Iron Man, thank you. 2008 was an eventful year, though this time, when Rhodey got the suit, it was given as a gift a bit more openly. The Senate hadn’t had to get involved, though there was more than a bit of grief given over the fact that only Rhodes could use the suit at all.

She was there when Steve was recovered to SHIELD, and part of that was because she’d managed to find her dad’s part in its founding while she’d been tearing through any and all old files the man had for a way to save her life in 03 and found out about that. When Coulson had come around, she’d made sure he knew that she knew so that he could make sure Fury knew, and it turned into a lot of knowing. 

Which is how it came around that she got to gawk at Steve, and could admit privately that her dad had a reason for being so enamored with the guy. She didn’t stick around though, and the Loki situation went down somewhat similarly to canon, though admittedly with a whole lot less of Steve yelling at Toni. Coulson hadn’t been saved, and she was devastated at losing a good friend. 

Other events after that start to fall back in line with canon, though she keeps the reactor here for different reasons, given Killian went after her personally in a sort of ‘round two’ to try and get her aid. It led to her being a lot more intimately involved in the Extremis process. It had the upside of neutralizing the shrapnel, certainly, but reacted strangely to the element of the reactor in her chest, fusing it into her bones during the process. It can no longer be removed at all, though it still has a puts out the same amount of power it had before the incident. Stabilizing Extremis left things… strange for her, and she is both stronger and heals more quickly, as well as her aging seeming to have come to a standstill, if not erasing signs of her advancing age from her entirely. After the stabilization process, she no longer ran the risk of lighting things on fire on accident at least, so she counts it as a win.

She’s just had to shift the designs of her suits around it and has since then settled in to working with her team, dealing with the catastrophes that come knocking. Things shifted to a radical right turn from there, given that she had heightened involvement in SHIELD and it’s simple enough to say that she unearthed Coulson’s being alive because of this, as well as the plans for the Helicarriers, and set about making them more difficult because of the slight implied by Coulson. 

Which got the Winter Soldier turned on her, well over a year before he would have been inflicted on Fury. Only Extremis saved her, but it dragged the man to Steve’s attention, and she set about helping him with that instead of focusing on other projects, wanting to sort out what had been her favorite from her father’s stories. 

Aside from Peggy Carter anyway.

* * *

**Accessorizing a Toni Timeline.**

Okay! After intense discussion with several people I finally figured out how the hell her timeline works! Like, post-Killian I mean. Incorporating up to Civil war timepoint instead of hitting like, 2013 and being fucking clueless. So here is her timeline!!

**1970**
  * Natasha Antonia Stark is born.
**1977**
  * First kidnapping.
**1982**
  * Second kidnapping, sent to boarding school to progress more quickly though grades and high school.
**1985**
  * Goes to MIT.
**1987**
  * Creates Dum-E
  * Howard and Maria Stark are killed (it should be noted I always use this timepoint, yes I know it’s not the canon year, all other events remain the same)
  * Decides she’s done with schooling and finishes her last degree to leave MIT.
**1988**
  * Takes over Stark industries, against Obadiah’s advisement.
**2001**
  * 9/11 happened.
**2002**
  * Obadiah loses patience and uses the disaster the year before to urge Toni overseas sooner to try to buoy the troops and take advantage of the paranoia. 
  * She’s promptly captured and subjected to months of horror as per Afghanistan.
  * Beginning of the stealthy removal of Stark from making weapons, without breaking any military ties. Instead, emphasis on armor and defensive measures begins. Medical technologies become vastly higher on the priority scale.
  * Iron Man begins to be seen around the world, though never in conjunction with Toni Stark. Operations are stealthier.
  * A side effect of these actions is that different weapons were used in Sokovia a few years later.
**2003**
  * Conflict with Obadiah very early in the year as he realizes something is up.
  * Deadly conflict toward the end of the year in which his death has to be carefully handled and covered to the media as something less hero-ey. JARVIS placed in charge of keeping the information organized as his first major hacking task is likely responsible for SHIELD keeping out of it.
  * Toni realizes she’s dying, and makes contingencies for her death. Starts going through all her father’s files and finds out about SHIELD.
**2004**
  * She starts spending unusual amounts of times around the company, much to Pepper’s paranoia at her sudden efficiency.
  * This leads to her playing with the expo model a _lot_ and catching wind that something is weird about it.
  * Badassium ends up created before anyone but her lawyers have a concrete notion that anything about her is hinky.
**2005**
  * SHIELD finally tracks Iron Man back to Toni in January and proceeds to try to make contact via Natasha. It does not go well, though there is no big reveal as Toni is not dying.
  * Toni promptly digs into them more than she initially had in 2003 and finds that they’re maintaining ongoing searches for Rogers. She demands to be kept informed and starts looking into things on her own.
**2007**
  * Regular visits from Coulson ensue when late in the year Hammer and her have a bickering match that leads to a couple explosions at the edge of the city as he tries to show off to her. Without Vanko, it is nowhere near the same kind of production.
  * Weapons production in Stark Enterprises has come to a complete and total halt by this point, and all outstanding weapon caches are taken care of to Toni’s awareness.
**2008**
  * Toni outs herself when a determined reporter asks if she has anything to do with Iron Man. She just flat out declares it’s her.
  * She openly gives a suit to Rhodey before the first grumbles can turn into the Senate show that male Toni dealt with over a year later in his timeline.
**2011**
  * Toni is present for Steve’s recovery but flees before they can try to wake him, instead hanging around outside the building as he runs by to escape due to her uncertainty of a desire to actually be involved.
  * Thor touches down in New Mexico.
**2012**
  * Loki happens and events here are largely unchanged, though Toni had gone out of her way to get a conversation out of Steve before making him aware that ‘Iron Man’ was actually a woman and that Toni was said woman.
  * Toni was deeply betrayed to see her friend Natasha at the table.
  * That Christmas Killian makes his move on her and everything goes to absolute hell. Her house is blown up, and she’s captured instead of making it to Montana. Killian uses her own body against her with Extremis instead of using Pepper as an intermediary. This results in weird results because of the reactor and she later stabilizes her own changed anatomy once Killian is dealt with.
**2013**
  * Her persistent getting into of SHIELD files finally turns up something she just can’t get behind and she dares to confront someone about it.
  * Bucky is promptly sent to kill her around her birthday. 
  * It fails.
  * Toni immediately hunts Steve down to rant about it and informs him of the details of Extremis at that point to explain why she wasn’t currently dead, which hadn’t been previously brought up in the months since it happened. From there, she starts digging into SHIELD for possible answers about the one who tried to kill her, instead running into things that _really_ shouldn’t have been there.
  * Two weeks later there’s a hit on Fury when Toni is back in New York digging and doing an impressive job of tearing apart SHIELD’s files.
  * Steve ends up with a huge mess on his hands which leads to dealing with Zola’s AI, among other things, Natasha sticking with him through the duration.
  * The sudden drop off of contact rings alarm bells for Toni but all efforts to make contact fail, and she sets JARVIS on the situation, heading to DC to find out what the fuck is going on the next morning. 
  * Toni ends up caught in the SHIELD crossfire when she catches wind of the moved up plans to launch the helicarriers and tries to interfere from inside the installation. It works, but it also really doesn’t, given that the whole underground facility ends up being blown up with her still inside.
  * Steve ends up intercepted by Bucky when he and Natasha manage to corner Pierce, leading to a rather vicious fight that has more than a little property damage, and Natasha being alone with Sam while dealing with the WSC.
  * By the time Toni manages to free herself of the deathtrap SHIELD became, it was to find Steve had been in the hospital but was already released, but had a new friend who she clearly needed to research after she got five seconds to breathe.
  * Thor fights the Dark Elves.
**2014**
  * In the wake of the SHIELD fall Toni ends up starting to build a grid to keep an eye on just about everything, and this starts her personal alert system.
  * She also builds the compound for the other Avengers to live in early in the year.
**2015**
  * Toni runs into Wanda for the first time in less than favorable circumstances, and it’s messy, but does not lead to any world catastrophes. The Maximoffs are still not in the best position as they still had a lot of rage, and still ended up with their abilities. This results in the Maximoffs being offered a place on the team once events play out, and arrangements are made to give them legal ground to be in the US.
  * Toni manages to track Barnes down to give him a piece of her mind. It’s a little brutal, but she drags him home where she can keep an eye on him and there are no casualties. Steve is a bit less understanding of her methods, but grateful.
**2016**
  * Government oversight is proposed, but given the source of the threats that have been dealt with, it has yet to get traction since nothing can be pinned on the local hero population that is deemed _negative._
  * Toni has no reason to support the motion, but now that she’s aware that it’s even a thought, has started to discuss with the others how it should be handled if it comes around. She is, however, closely scrutinized for her ‘alarm’ system and has an uphill battle to keep it from being taken over by a government agency. 
**2017**
  * Toni digs deep into lingering administration about a registration legislation and manages to get in footnotes about degree of rights, prisoner handling, and what such a registered license would entail. It ends up badly needed, and not a moment too soon, given the Inhuman mess that keeps hitting the news all over the world.




	37. Complicated Family AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Bucky is Tony's grandfather, Peter and Darcy are his kids, and Obadiah is kind of a dick about everything.

**Wherein Tony is Excellent at Surprise Family**

Tony Stark is the child of Howard and Maria Stark né Carbonell.

His mother is of Italian descent, and his father is his father. 

In one variation of this universe, everything from that point forward stays the same up until Tony more or less ambushes Bucky in a McDonalds after CA:TWS. This includes the deaths of his parents, which this Tony always has happen in 87, but otherwise happens for the same reasons, by the same people.

In the other variation of this universe, Tony has a child at 22, meets her at 25, and then moves on with his life with her in it, raising tiny Darcy as his daughter hidden behind the Lewis name of her mother. He’s a protective dragon of a parent, and even her mother would have to pry his daughter from his cold dead fingers if she wanted them to break contact.

In that variation of the universe, Tony goes to Europe in 2000, trying to figure out what the fuck happened to him when he was twenty-four and was missing for a week. He does get answers, in the form of HYDRA taking another pass at him while the getting was good, and the Winter Soldier is sent to collect him since it was convenient at the time.

Tony, being Tony, takes one look at the man while in captivity and ends up figuring out a way to kidnap one Bucky Barnes _right the fuck back_ on his way out. Because that, ladies and gentlemen, is his grandfather and HYDRA should not have their grubby paws on him.

Why yes, that is where everything goes a little odd isn’t it?

In this timeline, Tony’s Mother is Bucky’s daughter and is over twenty years younger than her husband. You see, during the war, Bucky had a couple of encounters, and one of them was with a woman named Elisabetta Moretti. She was a pretty Italian woman, Blond with dark eyes, and she never had the chance to inform Bucky of the results of their dalliance before catching the news that he’d died. She promptly searched out a husband for herself in the form of Gregor Carbonell, an injured American who was getting sent back home, and who due to his injuries would never be able to have children of his own.

It worked well for them both, and only Elisabetta knew the parentage of her baby, which she kept to herself. The only person she told was Maria, and Maria in turn only told Tony, unwilling to subject him to Howard’s Captain America obsession any further than he already tended to. 

So you see, when Tony comes face to face with the information that the man is alive, in either variation of this world, he’s immediately deeply and intensely vested in making that connection because Bucky Barnes is _family._

The timeline stays mostly intact from there until Steve is found in this second variation. After that, well, things go a little odd after that. The key word, after all, is _mostly._

Especially given that in early 2014 Tony meets a sixteen, going on seventeen, year old Peter Parker, who Obadiah had kept him from knowing about. Who turns out to be his kid too. 

It’s more than a little understandable if Tony starts going over all his personal records more thoroughly at that point, obviously.

* * *

**A family with a lot going on.**

In this timeline, everything is rather confusing, all told. SO LET’S MAKE IT A LITTLE LESS CONFUSING. This is, of course, for the version with the kids, as the version without the kids is actually rather straightforward.

**1917**
  * **March 10:** James Buchanan Barnes is born.
**1918**
  * **July 4:** Steven Grant Rogers is born.
**1943**
  * **August:** Stark Expo with Howard’s fail flying car.
  * **August:** Steve picked up for project rebirth.
  * **October:** Bucky picked up at the from as a POW.
  * **November:** Steve to the rescue as Captain America.
**1944**
  * **Late September:** Bucky has a brief affair with Elisabetta Moretti in Italy.
  * **December:** Bucky falls off the train and is recovered by Russians in league with HYDRA.
  * **December:** He’s fitted with the first version of his new arm.
**1945**
  * **January:** Steve crashes the Valkyrie into the ice.
  * **February:** Elisabetta Moretti marries Gregor Carbonell after hearing about Bucky’s demise and moves to America when he’s discharged for injuries.
  * **June 14th:** Maria Carbonell is born.
**1967**
  * Maria and Howard meet and hit it off immediately. She doesn’t mention her birth father’s name, and they’re married by the end of the year.
**1968**
  * **November 19th:** James Rupert Rhodes is born.
**1970**
  * **May 29th:** Anthony Edward Stark is born.
**1985**
**
  * Tony and Rhodey meet in college.
**1987**
  * **December 16th:** Tony’s parents die.
  * Tony graduates college, deciding not to go back for his next degree as planned.
**1992**
  * **August 1st:** Darcy Stark born. Tony is unaware.
**1994**
  * Spring, Tony is picked up by HYDRA for the first time and is back home again in just under two weeks. 
**1995**
  * Clint and Natasha meet and he takes her in to SHIELD.
  * Tony meets Darcy for the first time. He immediately insists on partial custody.
  * Darcy meets Rhodey.
**1997**
  * **August 10th:** Peter Parker born. Tony is, once again, unaware. (this one is older than MCU Peter)
**1998**
  * Obadiah legally blocks the Parkers from contacting Tony about Peter.
**1999**
  * Obadiah arranges to have Darcy’s mother Anne die in a car accident.
  * Tony gets full custody of his daughter.
** ****2000
  * Obadiah tips off the people chasing the Parkers and they die in a plane crash.
  * Tony goes to Europe to try to sort out his kidnapping six years before.
  * Tony abducted by HYDRA _again._ This time via the Winter Soldier.
  * Tony abducts the Winter Soldier on his way back out a few weeks later and takes the man home with him.
  * Rough transition period ensues and Obadiah is _not_ happy about anything at all.
**2008**
  * **Late May:** Obadiah takes out a hit on Tony, Afghanistan happens.
  * **September 4th:** Tony shuts down weapons production on arriving home to US soil.
  * **September:** Tony promptly digs in and starts making suits, and more suits, and cruising the world taking out weapons. 
**2009**
  * **January:** Senate hearing.
  * **March:** Obadiah dies after a mess of events that lead to him being blown up.
**2010**
  * **February:** Natasha hits the scene as Natalie Rushman.
  * **April:** Disaster of a race with Vanko.
  * **May:** Tony’s disaster birthday party.
  * November: Start of Stark Expo.
**2011**
  * **April 25th:** Thor crashes down in New Mexico.
  * **May 5th:** Stark expo is _completely trashed_ by Hammeroids, Rhodey, and Tony. Thus these became the closing ceremonies.
  * **May 6th:** Thor and the Warrior’s Three trash New Mexico town and Darcy misses her check-in.
  * **May 6th, Late afternoon:** Tony shows up and him and Darcy out their relation. A little bit.
  * **June:** Darcy abducted then summarily rescued by Natasha, her family swooping in shortly after.
  * **July:** Steve found and woken.
  * **July:** Tony kidnaps Steve back to his Malibu residence to meet Bucky again.
**2012**
  * **May:** Loki comes down and fucks up New York all over the place.
  * **December:** Tony has the shitfest with Killian. Bucky caught in the crossfire of the house being collapsed.
**2013**
  * **February:** Peter is bitten by a spider and suddenly abilities.
  * **Early March:** Peter’s Uncle Ben dies.
  * **Late March:** Peter takes down the Lizard’s crazy plan as Spiderman.
  * **November:** Shit gets real in London with Dark elves. Darcy yelled at because what the actual fuck child.
**2014**
  * **March:** Tony meets Peter at a kid Expo in the tower and finds out he’s his son. Ends up bitched out by Aunt May.
  * **March:** Darcy meets Peter.
  * **April:** Rhodey meets Peter and finds out he’s Spiderman.
  * **July:** Peter is outed as Spiderman to everyone else.




	38. Over Involved HYDRA AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Tony has clone kids, Barnes kind of _shows up_ and everything is an emotional mess. Also, extremis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one of the first AUs I ended up with in the Marvel universe and I can't actually say I'm sorry about that. It's kind of fabulous, even if it was pieced together by joining a lot of not-remotely-related bits of story to get here.

**HYDRA Yoyo.**

HYDRA Yoyo is the universe where HYDRA, being both optimistic and impatient, got a hold on Tony’s genetics years before he went to Afghanistan, and spliced them with James Barnes’ in a sort of clone project in an attempt to get the best of both their attributes.

They actually succeeded, but their attempt to age the child more quickly to toddler, and thus more functional years backfired on them. It made the kid’s body, under strain, show no effects of the serum, and seemed to retard his intelligence badly when really he was just a _tiny little infant_ in an older body.

After a year, without things going how they wanted, and unwilling to kill it in case they made a mistake, they rather literally dumped the child on Tony’s doorstep. One round of genetic testing and a whole HELL OF A LOT of confusion later, and Tony was legally in possession of his son. That he had just recovered from dying only made the whole process rockier, really.

Pepper was made his Godmother, and Rhodey the godfather. And then Rhodey was the cause of the kid getting a _name…_ which is how you get to James Nathaniel Stark. Who Tony went out of his way to make sure no one found out about. Of the Avengers, in fact, only Natasha and Bruce are aware until things get real in 2014. Natasha, because she rescued the kid from a rogue fridge turkey, and Bruce because he lived with Tony for so long and found out as a gesture of trust. After passing the requisite tests anyway.

Time moved forward as these things do, the kid grew up, and then D.C. happened. Tony, being the kind of guy he was, hunted down James and ambushed him outside a supermarket. 

They proceeded to become absurdly attached quickly, though admittedly part of this was the result of Extremis and how he got it, Tony introduced the guy to their mutual kid (which is when they realized that was a thing) and from there the world devolved into a series of increasingly rude HYDRA situations.

The very first HYDRA situation which precursed the whole intro thing gave Tony a version of Extremis that had a very strange relationship with tech inside a certain vicinity. The next of which had less happy side effects.

Thus, HYDRA Yoyo. Because these two can’t seem to stay away from the hands of HYDRA for long. And it’s pissing Tony the hell off.

* * *

**A Yoyo Timeline**

Many of the events until 2014 are still near to canon, aside from the clone kid deal, rather, my iteration of canon, with a few small addendums.

**June 1994**
  * Tony is at a party in Europe and is kidnapped by someone with a skin contact sedative on their hands.
  * After a week and a half, he turns back up in public, with people only being aware of his missing status for a week.
**December 1994**
  * HYDRA starts their experiments with stolen genetic material.
**April 2000**
  * AIM finally gets off the ground with a mystery benefactor.
**November 2002**
  * AIM approached by a faction of HYDRA unknowingly, accepts in new members.
  * Cloning becomes a project on both sides, but human testing is strictly on the HYDRA side.
**January 2003**
  * First successful clones to survive initial creation, further experiments started.
**November 2004**
  * Project gets up to Simulacrum Test number 42. Only four clones surviving at that timepoint.
  * Durability and modification tests begun. Immediately there are shocking failures.
May 2008
  * Afghanistan
**November 2009**
  * Someone in HYDRA realizes there is an opportunity because of the palladium used for the Arc Reactor.
**February 2010**
  * Simulacrum Mix Test One a success, using the last of stolen genetic material. The other material provided belonged to the Asset. 
  * Careful aging process begun, problems immediately encountered.
  * Aging is halted months after process begun due to concern the project will die without being of use.
**May 2011**
  * Tony Stark fails to die as projected.
  * Mix test deemed a failure due to lowered capabilities after a year of training and aging. 
  * Tony start finds what looks to be a four-year-old literally on his doorstep two weeks after the Stark Expo disaster.
  * The child is named James Nathaniel Stark. After Rhodey.
  * Pepper is made the godmother. Rhodey the godfather.
**January 2013**
  * Bruce meets James, dubbed Jamjam as his nickname.
**April 2013**
  * HYDRA approaches the remnants of AIM and pulls them under their umbrella.
**November 2013**
  * Natasha meets Jamjam by saving him from a frozen turkey. Learns from the child that Clint is evil for eating all his cereal on previous visit, and Steve is rude for drinking his orange juice on his.
  * Natasha brought in on teaching the kid self-defense and the term ‘ninja class’ becomes a fixture.
**January 2014**
  * Inspired HYDRA operative decides to put listening devices and signal delay devices in all Avenger tech possible. Is not known or later revealed to be anything but a SHIELD technician and tampering goes unnoticed. 
**April 2014**
  * The disaster in Washington DC with Bucky happens.
**May 2014**
  * Late in the month Tony manages to track down and ambush James Buchanan Barnes outside a grocery store. They hit it off immediately.
**June 2014**
  * Early in the month Tony is abducted by HYDRA at the tail end of a social party using a drugged drink.
  * It’s over a week and no one was able to contact the other Avengers to help locate Tony. Rhodey has no success.
  * Bucky, known to Tony as James, finally comes back from a planned HYDRA-smashing spree to find out Tony is missing. He and JARVIS pin down a face James recognizes, and he manages to track him to a technologically shielded facility.
  * Tony has a strange variation of Extremis that is more electrical than the fire, quickly finds out he can kill people by touching them and freaks.
  * Over a week and a half later Jamjam brought home for the first time in nearly two months, and everyone finds out James is his other parent. Tony accuses James of not being a woman, much to his confusion.
**August 2014**
  * Tony and James talk about their relationship and making more of it.
  * Late in the month HYDRA springs for taking another pass at Tony, this time planning and capturing James as well.
  * They escape within the week, with some technical issues.
**September 2014**
  * Very start of the month Tony goes on a mission with the team and is brutal to HYDRA agents. Steve follows him home.
  * Chaos as Steve finds out Bucky has been living with Tony, much upset and secrets are spilled. Tony finds out about the technological fuckery.
  * Tony goes to the Facility and starts knocking down walls without warning to deal with all the plants and interferences.
  * The Danger Levels Jokes begin.
  * Tony finally tells Peggy about his kid after years of silence.
**October 2014**
  * James and Tony give Steve a limited capacity tracker for them as both a joke and genuine attempt to make up for their silences on the situation.
  * Steve finally meets Jamjam.
  * James tells Tony about killing his parents. Tony promptly runs to Steve, then right back again as that didn’t work as well as hoped.
**November 2014**
  * James finds the facility where the Simulacrum Tests were held. ST42 is found and brought home. He looks like Tony did in his early 20s.
  * Tony names him Esteban, to James’ horror. Esteban proceeds to shave but refuses to cut his longer than shoulder length hair. 
**December 2014**
  * Esteban finally settled and Jammers pesters Steve into art lessons.
**January 2015**
  * Tony proposes to James in the most _ass-backward_ way possible, and James agrees. This method involves tossing the ring at him, getting him to agree, then clarifying that it was a proposal after getting his answer to be sure it was understood.
**March 2015**
  * James and Tony get married in a tiny ceremony. Rhodey doesn’t even pretend not to give James a very thorough talking to beforehand. They wisely don’t tell Steve.
**April 2015**
  * HYDRA finally breaks their silence and sends the twins after the Stark adults while they’re tired from a mission that doesn’t have most of the team. It’s a complete disaster and loses HYDRA Wanda when she tries to mind whammy Tony in the wake of James being caught in an explosion they caused and Tony fries her.
  * Pietro escapes. 
  * Steve is not remotely forgiving when he gets wind that James died while out with Tony and it causes considerable friction that falls back to general iciness around the team.
**May 2015**
  * The Scepter is found, but there is no celebration. Bruce does his best to help, and it ultimately gets tucked away where SHIELD can’t lose it again, but neither where the team, mostly, knows where it is.




	39. Barnes Dad AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Winter Soldier makes off with the infant Tony due to Events.

**A Winter Soldier Dad**

In this universe, HYDRA almost got caught out in their infiltration by Howard not too long after Tony was born, and things go rather cockeyed from there.

**1917**
  * March 10th: James Buchanan Barnes is born.
  * August 15th: Howard Anthony Stark is Born.
**1918**
  * July 4th, Steven Grant Rogers is born.
**1921**
  * April 9th: Peggy (Margaret) Carter is born.
**1943**
  * June: Stark Expo with Howard’s fail flying car.
  * June 14th: Steve picked up for project rebirth.
  * October: Bucky picked up at the front as a POW.
  * November 24th: Steve to the rescue as Captain America.
**1944**
  * December: Bucky falls off the train and is recovered by Russians in league with HYDRA.
**1945**
  * January: Steve crashes the Valkyrie into the ice.
**1950-1952**
  * SHIELD is founded by Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, and Chester Phillips. Exact date unclear.
**1970**
  * May 29th: Tony (Anthony Edward) Stark is Born.
**1971**
  * January 7th: Clint(on Francis) Barton is born.
  * October 20th: HYDRA catches wind of Howard looking into their doings, ends up making arrangements to deal with him.
  * November 19th: The Winter Soldier kills the Stark parents. The child ends up going with him instead of being left behind, and he does not return to base.
**1975**
  * The Winter Soldier, now Bucky, stops traveling for the first time to allow Tony to have a year of school. He ends up moving them halfway through the school year, a trend which will continue until High School.
**1982**
  * A teacher finally has Tony long enough to find out how smart he is, gets him skipped up a couple grades, and Tony has the paperwork and tests done to start high school early. 
**1986**
  * Tony offered scholarships after his testing to several schools, and ends up picking the one that will let him follow a technological field.
  * Bucky tells Tony about what happened to his parents instead of just his name. He thinks on it.
**1988**
  * Tony and Rhodey meet over spring break and immediately become fast friends who stay in touch via letter correspondence.
**1991**
  * March: Finishes design and Dum-E is born as Tony’s thesis project for his Doctorate. 
**1992**
  * Tony gets a small business off the ground in the computer engineering field.
**1995**
  * Tony goes after SI to get his rightful inheritance sorted out, things are tied up until his current handprint is compared to the one in the Stark baby files.
**1997**
  * January: Tony builds his impossible house on a cliff, making sure it’s defensible to Bucky’s standards. He finds out how money can affect a housing situation when the house goes up _fast._
  * April: Uses the money influx to sort out the code to get JARVIS online the first time, he’d been musing on the code piecemeal for years.
  * July 12th: JARVIS becomes properly sentient and asks his first emotionally driven question.
**1999**
  * October: Tony meets and hires Pepper Potts as his personal assistant. 
**2000**
  * New Years: Killian makes his resolve to be an asshole to Tony someday, though events were more in line with Tony just not having the time to speak to the man, rather than forgetting. Killian never makes the offered appointment.
**2001**
  * September 11: National catastrophe strikes. Tony did not arrive for an intended meeting in the area, and immediately throws more focus into weapons for National Defense.
**2002**
  * Obadiah loses patience with Tony not doing as told and takes out a hit on him, urging the man overseas to ‘better ties’ while selling weapons.
  * He’s promptly captured and subjected to months of horror as per Afghanistan.
  * Bucky makes sure that Obadiah is _permanently_ taken care of after that.
  * Beginning of the stealthy removal of Stark Industries from making weapons, without breaking any military ties. Instead, emphasis on armor and defensive measures begins. Medical technologies become vastly higher on the priority scale, and the computer company Tony previously founded suddenly becomes far more lucrative than the weapons company that should have been.
  * Iron Man begins to be seen around the world, though never in conjunction with Tony Stark. Operations are stealthier as he sorts out the mess Obadiah left behind while he was presumed dead. Bucky is far from thrilled that his son is in danger at all.
**2003**
  * Bruce makes a mess with the Hulk coming on the scene.
  * Tony realizes he has a little problem with the element options he has for the reactor. He immediately digs deep to try to find out more about his dad, taking time he hadn’t previously had to do so. He figures he should at least have a clue about his birth parents before he dies. He spends extra time with Bucky but is hesitant to inform him of the situation before he notices on his own.
**2004**
  * January: Tony manages to pin down the element situation in the model, which is for an expo that never actually got to be put together beyond that. He’s amazed at the man’s brilliance and sad he never got to meet him. He _does_ tell Bucky he’s all better.
**2005**
  * January: SHIELD finally tracks Iron Man back to Tony and proceeds to try to make contact via Natasha. It does not go well as Bucky recognizes the woman’s training. Tony responds to this with understandable suspicion and immediately sees the woman out. He then turns his attention to investigating SHIELD. Upon finding out about the Steve Hunt, he starts to pay more attention to that, wanting to know about his dad’s best friend.
**2007**
  * Weapons production in Stark Enterprises has come to a near standstill by this point, and all outstanding weapon caches are taken care of to Tony’s satisfaction. Any lingering traces of weapons manufacture in SI are via non-lethal routes.
**2008**
  * Tony decides that it’s a perfect time to out himself when people start getting too close to casting their eye on Bucky and his life, and declares he’s Iron Man on national television. He uses this and the leverage it gets him to further look into ways to expand his companies. He ends up putting Pepper in charge of SI so he can look after Barnes Inc himself without a split in his attention.
**2011**
  * Tony and Bucky end up kidnapping Steve nearly immediately after he’s found, and SHIELD being infiltrated by HYDRA comes to light. This ends up bringing Tony’s gaze on it intently.
  * Thor touches down in New Mexico.
**2012**
  * Loki happens and events here are largely unchanged, though Bucky is on site and Steve and Tony have already hashed out most of their differences.




	40. Winter Soldier Tony AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Pepper, Rhodey, and Tony are switched in time with Peggy, Steve, and Bucky. Respectively. Their families, of course, get shuffled to make it go, and the MCU cants a bit to the left.

**But that isn’t how it went.**

This universe is an AU where we took six families and switched their time periods around. These families were the Rogers, Rhodes, Barnes, Stark, Potts, and Carter. Many characters in the universe will stay where they started, while these guys and the changes they bring with them are going to be not quite where they started in their canon orientations. This is the timeline for the events of this reversal.

**1897**
  * August 15th: Howard Anthony Stark is Born. His parents are practicing Jewish.
**1915**
  * November 19th: James Rupert Rhodes (Rhodey) is Born in Philadelphia.
**1917**
  * May 29th: Tony (Anthony Edward) Stark is Born in Brooklyn.
**1918**
  * January 24th: Howard enlists for WWI before the draft can get him, and manages to make his brilliance known in training so he could be diverted into weapon creation instead of the front lines.
**1919**
  * May 23rd: Jennifer Rhodes is born.
**1920**
  * March 17th: Virginia “Pepper” Potts is born as the only child of her parents.
**1922**
  * March 22nd: Howard finally released to come home from his government obligations to find his son already learning to build things.
  * August 17th: Rhodey’s dad dies, and his mother moves the family to New York in search of work and New Start. She finds a housekeeping position.
  * November 14th: George Barnes is born.
**1924**
  * Rhodey and Tony meet while Tony is fleeing some older kids and nearly bowls the asthmatic over. They quickly become inseparable. 
**1941**
  * Howard makes friends with George Barnes, and they negotiate to build a business in the younger man’s name, with Tony to come on as a partner once they’re established.
  * Pearl Harbor causes the business plans to be derailed and Howard pulls them both into government work when his weapon expertise is once again called upon.
**1943**
  * August: Tony gets caught in the draft, but plays it off as having enlisted, though he’s terrified because his heritage is well known in his neighborhood. 
  * August: Howard puts forward Rhodey as an option to Erskine after hearing about the young man’s failed effort to follow Tony into service. 
  * September: Pepper manages to weasel her way into the army, having successfully talked a medical evaluator into agreeing she was male.
  * September: Rhodey completes training and is the test subject for the serum, only for Erskine to die. As he refused being a lab-rat, he’s instead sent straight to the front since he’s hardly the public symbol that they’d been hoping for. 
  * October: The 107th is captured, and Tony meets Pepper for the first time. They hit it off immediately and between the two of them manage to keep things sort of less than awful in captivity. 
  * November: Rhodey finds out about the situation and manages to get the information and get in to get out Tony and those who would become the Commandos. Word only reached him because of Howard keeping tabs on his son.
**1944**
  * January: People start to tell stories back home about Captain America and his Commandos. There is an immediate cover-up about said Captain being a black man.
  * December: Things go horribly wrong and the train disaster happens to Tony. He’s picked up by Russians.
**1945**
  * January: Rhodey evaluates his options and gives his apologies before crashing the plane into the ocean in the wake of the Red Skull fight.
**1946**
  * June: Tony’s given a replacement arm for what he lost in the fall. He immediately starts to fuss with it. It has the unfortunate drawback of them moving up their timeline to get him sorted out and on their side.
**1947**
  * Howard officially gives up on bringing his son’s body home and focuses his attention on finding Rhodey’s downed ship.
**1948**
  * March: All identity of Tony Stark is effectively stamped out and his tinkering urges are directed toward Russian projects between a few test missions.
**1949**
  * April 27th: Obadiah Stane is born.
**1950**
  * Howard helps create SHIELD and leaves it in Pepper’s frighteningly capable hands. Her and George Barnes keep in contact. 
**1951**
  * Tony is no longer permitted free time around his missions after managing to recover enough sense of self to try to flee on one. Thereafter he’s frozen when not needed once it’s determined to be safe to do so.
**1960**
  * The Tesseract is found.
**1964**
  * June 22nd: Howard Stark dies in his sleep. All project notes and as of yet incomplete projects are left to Barnes for the business as the only heir Howard has remaining. 
**1969**
  * In the wake of the Black Rights Movement, the truth about Captain America’s actual heritage comes to light. Within the year the heritage of Tony Stark, as well as Pepper’s gender while one of the Commandos is also revealed.
  * December 18th: (Robert) Bruce Banner is born.
**1970**
  * March 10th: James Buchanan Barnes is born. 
**1971**
  * January 7th: Clint(on Francis) Barton is born.
  * July 4th: Steven Grant Rogers is born. 
**1972**
  * George Barnes meets Obadiah and they immediately hit it off.
**1973**
  * April: Joseph Rogers dies in Vietnam a week before his unit was to be recalled.
**1974**
  * September 21st: Rebecca Barnes is born.
**1976**
  * Sarah Rogers goes out of her way to sign Steve up for the first of many cutting edge medical studies to try and alleviate his rapidly developing health problems.
1979
  * Steve and Bucky meet when Bucky finds the younger boy lost after having gone outside from one of his appointments. They quickly determined how to keep in contact and met from time thereafter.
**1984**
  * November 22: Natasha Romanoff (Natalia Romanova) is born.
**1985**
  * Sarah gets Steve in for a particularly cutting edge procedure, one that actually works to improve his health dramatically. The lab doing it is the same one that worked with Jessica Jones as a child.
**1987**
  * Bucky heads to college a year early and gets into MIT.
**1989**
  * March: Bucky makes assistant bots as a thesis project.
  * November: Sarah Rogers dies during her hospital shift while trying to subdue a patient who came in armed. Her death leads to Steve deciding to go military for his education after high school.
**1990**
  * June: Bucky manages to lock down his degree with his parents, sister, and best friend attending. 
  * June: Immediately after the graduation, Steve heads off to his army training. His mother’s medical persistence had him grow up shockingly healthy compared to his sickly childhood.
**1991**
  * October 20th: George and Winifred Barnes are caught in the California fire that came to be known as the Oakland Firestorm. They were out there to meet a prospective new scientist for the company. Bucky gets custody of his teenage sister and decides to focus on the company instead of continuing his schooling.
**1993**
  * September: Steve and Peggy meet on a joint mission in Macedonia between England and the US.
**1995**
  * April: Bucky gets his prototype AI up and running and promptly decides he’s not going to follow up on it for the company, instead making her an assistant. He names the AI SARAH after Steve’s mother.
**1999**
  * January: Peggy decides to sign up with SHIELD after her time with the British Army is finished. Her and Pepper immediately hit it off.
**2000**
  * New Years: Killian makes the mistake of approaching the Barnes siblings via Rebecca and manages to offend her, and in turn keep Bucky from wanting anything to do with his project. He doesn’t take it well.
**2001**
  * September 11: National catastrophe.
**2003**
  * Bruce’s project goes off the rails and the Hulk is created. A pre-radiation state of this project that was used on Steve as a teenager.
**2007**
  * September: Bucky and Rebecca start discussing making the company public instead of private. Obadiah overhears and isn’t fond of this plan.
**2008**
  * January: Obadiah organizes a hit on Bucky, knowing he’d get enough control out of the company to nullify the threat to the company.
  * May: Afghanistan goes down. Due to his fascination with it as a child, Bucky actually manages to save his life with the reactor, though the suit immediately runs into a snag where flight is concerned.
  * June: Bruce breaks Harlem.
  * September: Bucky comes home and plans to go public with the company are discarded so that the siblings can work out what they’re doing with it. They hold a press conference the next day on Bucky’s insistence.
  * September: Bucky finally meets Steve’s Peggy as she’s his SHIELD liason.
  * September: After spending so long on the armor, Bucky ended up fascinated, and sets about trying to figure out how to make it something more substantial, leaving his sister to deal with the highly concerned Steve and Obadiah both.
**2009**
  * Late April: Bucky ends up in front of the Senate and is aggressively cheerful at them to deflect attention. He manages to keep them out of his project.
  * May: Obadiah turns up, having gotten his hands on Bucky’s project shortly after he came home, and there’s a knockdown fight that results in the man dying. Peggy managed to keep Rebecca out of the fight. 
  * June: Bucky realizes he’s in deep shit with his health and gets in contact with Peggy to see if there’s any doctors she would recommend. 
  * July: Between the Senate and his health worries, he convinces Steve to take one of the suits, in spite of that not being his preferred combat style.
  * August: Bucky and his sister agree to build the tower in New York and get it started.
  * November: Natasha meets Winter Soldier on assignment and is shot by him.
**2010**
  * February: Natasha sent around with all the files that Howard had left with SHIELD as per Pepper’s request. She immediately draws Bucky’s attention when she sticks around as an assistant.
  * April: Vanko pops up at the race and Bucky ends up diving onto the track to intercept him before he can come up into the crowd. 
  * November: Worried due to the lack of results so far with the Palladium, Bucky sets in motion the year-long science symposium his dad never got around to.
**2011**
  * April 25th: Thor crashes down in New Mexico and Coulson ends up on the scene.
  * May 1st: After over a year of work, Bucky finally manages to make something of Howard’s notes and manages to test it a bit.
  * May 5th: Vanko, having been recruited by Hammer, makes a mess of the symposium and effectively trashes the area.
  * May 6th: Thor and the Warrior’s Three trash New Mexico town. 
  * July: Rhodey is finally found and Fury is the first person he sees when he wakes.
  * September: Tony starts being kept awake until the new year to have him deal with duplicating, or at least deciphering, some of the new technology for HYDRA. He doesn’t get as far as they would have liked before he gives them difficulty and has to be reset. 
**2012**
  * May 4th: Loki arrives on the scene and screws up a SHIELD facility, taking people with him.
  * Within a week after the 4th: Causes a scene in Europe, then the next day fucks up New York all over the place. Peggy keeps Coulson from dying and lectures the erstwhile Avengers into compliance.
  * Early December: The Mandarin starts killing people on National television. Steve takes exception to it and Bucky ends up in the middle of it. The Army is not amused.
  * End of December: Killian grabs Rebecca to show off and everything falls apart when Maya can’t fix her before Killian loses his patience and kills his partner. Bucky takes it incredibly badly, and Steve keeps his focus on protecting the president and constituents.
**2013**
  * January: Bruce turns up to do what he can for Rebecca, and manages to stabilize the Extremis she’d been modified with.
  * February: Tired of the ongoing threat of the shrapnel, Bucky goes to get it removed. Due to other issues the surgery had to be pulled out of before the reactor could be removed. He’s not exactly happy about that.
  * November 8th: Jane Foster caught up with the Ether.
  * November 10th: Shit gets real in London with Dark elves. 
**2014**
  * April 4th: Assassination attempt on Fury kicks off things going to hell in Washington DC. 
  * April 5th: Rhodey surprised and admittedly a little jealous of Sam’s wings. They hit it off in the middle of the chaos.
  * April 6th: Helicarriers come down, and Rhodey is a mess because once again, Tony’s vanished on him.
**2015**
  * Late April: Avengers recover Loki’s staff.



From this point, the timeline is liable to veer even more wildly off course, though I have nothing planned out from here.


	41. Fish AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where in Everyone is Ocean Life and not the mermaid variety.

**Fish Avengers.**

So about four months ago, long before I started writing Tony, I and a friend were out doing groceries. And it led to this:

So there’s this billboard by the grocery store, you see, with an ever-changing picture in LEDs. That day, it was for the Romanow law offices, and their mascot is a bright red shark. I, of course, read it as Romanov. Then came a clownfish next time we saw one of their ads. Fish Avengers AHOY!

It was quickly decided that the clownfish was clearly Clint, and because Clint was a clownfish, and that kind of Shark didn’t suit Natasha at all, we decided she must be a sea Anenome instead. Aka, deadly and graceful while being a secret predator.

So, of course, once we decided _that_ we had to start in on everyone else.

Next was, clearly, Tony. The Octopus. Bruce followed quickly after that by being the Pufferfish.

Steve had to be a special snowflake, because he’s _Steve,_ so he’s a dolphin. And if _Steve_ is a _Dolphin,_ then there is no choice but for Bucky to be a killer whale.

This left us staring at Thor going ‘what are you?’

At first, we thought maybe a land dweller would work, like a seal or something, but then we had to figure out how to get Loki into that. Which is what finally rolled us around to Thor the Electric Eel and Loki the Water moccasin.

We couldn’t just forget Sam, over in his corner, so he’s a Manta Ray.

And then there was Fury, who, well. He’s not fish, or even proper sea life. He’s a Seagull, because yeah. That just _fits._

Which led to the question of 'what’s Coulson??’ and I, at a loss, declared he was a Sea turtle. I still have no regrets.

(Around this point in the listing I started to verbally flail about, which is leads to my capslock I fear. I was spazzing because I couldn’t stop _thinking_ you see.)

And I’m vaguely terrified because now I’m trying to figure Vision and Rhodey and Wanda and Pietro. whatever Vision is should have a variant that works for Ultron!

….VISION IS A JELLYFISH!

Rhodey is a starfish.

Pietro is a Manta Shrimp.

Wanda is a Pistol Shrimp.

Also, Vision is the Purple Striped Jellyfish and Ultron is a white spotted jellyfish.

…I’m gonna stop before I get into Shield agents and Daredevil and Jessica Jones and stuff.

(But I just had to add one more, which brought us right back to the start.)

Red Skull is a Shark.

Please, someone, write this. Write it in all its cracktacular glory.


End file.
